Technological responsiveness of organic production system in Terai region of West Bengal, India

Introduction

Organic farming is a buzzing word among all modern agricultural practices in recent era as it not only provides healthy food, soils, plants, and environments but also ensure long term sustainability of the production system (Makadia and Patel, 2015; Tsvetkov et al., 2018) [11,19] . This is one of the agricultural interventions with a combination of crop production with traditional wisdom with a good blend of modern non-chemical technologies (Brković et al. 2016) [1] . There are several benefits of organic farming, these are nutritional benefits and health safety; environmental impact; and Socio-economic impact (Das et al, 2020) [5] . Simultaneously, consumer preference also changed over the decade, growing consciousness about non-chemical treated food, food with no added preservatives, indigenous or local variety of crop, increases demand of organic farming (Jansen, et al. 2020) [8] . Various public and private extension interventions help to motivate farmers to shift towards organic farming, hence created awareness and knowledge about organic farming and related innovative technologies. The major solution for the problem of present agricultural society and of natural resource degradation may be development and promotion of organic farming (Chabet, 2021) [4] . In Palaghar region of Maharashtra, majority of the consumers were aware of organic vegetables and ready to pay premium price up to 5 to 10 percent, the legislative measures and government assurance would be effective in ensuring trust and quality of organic vegetables. Although majority of the customers were aware about the health risks of consumption of inorganic vegetables but still, they prefer to buy inorganic vegetables only. The reasons for this tendency of the consumers were found out as nonavailability of organic vegetables and also the issues of identification (Raval, 2019) [17] . Similarly horticultural farmers of Khordha district of Odisha were aware of all the organic farming practices though they were not using them regularly, probably due to some constraints such as time consuming, transportation, inadequate credit facilities, and www.extensionjournal.com inadequate storage facility, climate change, capital intensive, lack of extension agents, technical know-how (Patro, 2016) [14] . In case of Uttarakhand, around 40 percent of the farmers had favorable believe towards organic farming and were about basic facts of organic farming such as it sustainability, health benefits and non-permissibility of chemical fertilizers and herbicides (Singh and George, 2012) [18] . High awareness of organic farming was observed among the undergraduate students of a Nigerian University but had inadequate knowledge on certification procedures causing slow rate of adoption (Iyagba and Amesi, 2016) [7] . With the increasing demand for organic products necessities the assessment of farmer's knowledge level, awareness level and level of adoption regarding scientific management of organic crop cultivation and livestock farming as well. So that research can effective boost organic farming among different communities in India (Johnson et al, 2023) [9] . Terai region of West Bengal has recently come forward to practice organic farming although it was introduced in around 10-15 years ago but confined within limited farming clusters. Due to pro-active efforts of both public and private extension agents' awareness on organic farming technologies increased manifold in recent years. In this context, awareness of the farmers regarding organic production technology in Terai region of West Bengal were taken into consideration in the present study.

Materials and Methods

The Terai region of West Bengal constitute with the plains of Darjeeling district, total landmass of Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar and upper region of Cooch Behar district in the Northern part of West Bengal. Among these, Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar district were selected for the study purposively. Organic clusters had been selected from each district purposively based on the information gathered from office of Dy. Director of Agriculture of respective districts. A sample of 450 farmers was selected randomly from certain organic farming areas of these districts taking 150 farmers from each of Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar district. A list of organic technology exposed to the respondents and asked whether it was known to the respondent; and whether they adopted it or not. Organic technologies on Soil Health Management, Cultural Practice, Nutrient Inputs, Growth Promoter and Plant Protection were taken into consideration, and collected responses with the help of a two-point scale indicating "yes" or "no" with corresponding scores of 1 and 0 respectively. The list of organic technology was collected from (Hanglem, 2017 and Karthika, 2013) [6,10] and vetted by the experts from the University and the State Line Department officers. Those technologies were only considered in final list which shown discrimination (in Reliability analysis) over different types of respondents during pilot survey. In the present study, maximum and minimum value of data set, mean, standard deviation, covariance was calculated of each of the selected districts. Then, technology-wise percentage of different levels of awareness (low, medium and high) was analyzed. A Tukey test is a post-hoc test, which applied in this research data set to understand homogeneity between districts regarding awareness on organic techniques. To find out Area-wise Awareness Quotient (AQ) on different organic production techniques Fratio was used. Measurement of average Awareness Quotient helps researcher to understand ability to reflect hypothesis and findings without judgement or bias or negative feelings. Correlation coefficients are indicators of the strength of the linear relationship between two different variables x and y, here in this study socio-personal characters (x) and awareness level on all organic technology (y).

Results and Discussion

Demographic variables and their nature of distribution in the sampling area:

Table 1 depicts listed socio-economic variables their district wise and overall distribution. Overall findings from the present study that responding farmer were between the age of 29 years to 65 years with 45 years as mean age. Education level of respondents ranges from illiterate to secondary level. Both nuclear and joint families were found among the respondents of the study area with number of family members ranging from 2 to 10. The average number of family members found was 3-4 (table value 3.67 ~ 4) per family. Land holding of the respondents ranged from 1 acre to 10 acre with mean holding of 3.2 acre on an average. Agricultural asset possession was assessed by possession of draught animals, power tillers, tractor, sprayer, duster, pump set other minor equipment etc. with assigned scores as per their monetary value with 1 score; and it was found that asset score varied from 2 to 15. Mean asset possession of 5.92 score denotes that the respondent families were having lower level of agricultural asset possession.

In case of training received, it was found that the responding farmers had taken 1 (table value 2.76 ~3) numbers of training on an average ranging from no training to a maximum of 10 numbers of trainings per respondent. Social participation was the membership of different social organizations like groups, clubs etc. and it was found that respondents were engaged with maximum 1 village level organizations, which may be said that they had a low level of social participation. Each and every farmer and farm woman are associated with at least one such social group for their own development. Whereas, outside contact was calculated on the basis of frequency of visit to places for promotion of their farming practices and respondents scored up to 9 as maximum limits with mean score of pretty less as 2.41 per respondent. Score of contact to extension personnel varies from 7 to 15 with average value of 10.60 which indicates that terai farmers are maintaining good contact with extension agents to gather agricultural information. Mass media score ranges between 5 to 15 with mean score of 8.25 indicates that they are also in exposure with the proper influential factors that may be utilized for their behavioural change towards adoption of organic farming practices. These results had resemblance with past researchers as well (Poyyamoli and Padmavathy, 2011) [15] . In this study four organic production technologies were considered to understand their level of awareness and, categorized in low level (up to 33.33%) of awareness score against each technology), similarly for moderate level (more than 33% to 67%) for high level (more than 67% score). To better understanding this distribution further grouped as per their level of awareness It can be revealed from the figure a. that on average 24-26 percent from the study area had low level of awareness about different organic production technologies. Then if we compare figure (b & c) then it can be understood that for nutritional supplementary techniques 40 percent of the respondents are in moderate category and 21 percent have high level of awareness, followed by Growth Promoting techniques 39 percent again in moderate category and 11 percent only had high level of awareness.

For plant protection and soil & cultural management techniques majority respondents had higher level of awareness i.e., 31 percent and 37 percent respectively. that more than three fourth (76.44%) respondents had aware about avoidance of disease crop; followed by 78.22 percent on green manuring crop, 78.67 percent on legume crop, 77.78 percent on crop rotation, 78.67 percent aware on pH neutralization technologies but very few (29.33%) of them knew about flooding technique to eradicate nematode from the effected field as well as for change of planting date to avoid disease and insect attack (47.56%) as a cultural practice. Again, there are similarities with other researchers [14] . . depicts that more than three forth (77.78%) of the respondent had awareness about Pranamrit; followed by 78.67 percent each on ghanajivamrit, panchyagavya, biofertilizer, vermi-compost, oil cake and farmyard manure; 78.22 percent of the were aware about azolla and enriched compost; 75.56 percent on poultry litter, and 75.11 percent on neem cake. But less than half (49.33%) of them had aware about burn dry leaves as a source of nutrient, followed by 40.89 percent aware about amritjal, 33.78 percent of them aware about BD preparation and wood ash; very few of them (13.33 percent, 12.44 percent, 10.22 percent respectively) were aware about fowl silt, muck soil, rock phosphate respectively as because these nutritional technologies for organic farming were less popular among farmers to provide nutritional requirement to plant. These results as per with past researchers as well (Nenna and Ugwumba, 2014; Benabise and Banciles, 2012; Charyulu and Biswas, 2010) [12,2,3] . [16] indicated awareness level was different among farmers of Andhra Pradesh compared to Karnataka regarding emarketing but promotion of more participation in the efficient marketing system can boost the awareness and knowledge level. 5) were calculated between awareness level and socio-personal variables of the respondents. As per the tabulated data asset possession, social participation had significant relationship with awareness at 1% level of significance, whereas training received was significant at 5% level. Although, age, education, no. of family members, land holding, contact with extension personnel, mass media contact, outside contact had no relation with awareness level on organic technology. The probable reason might be as organic farming is a labor-intensive agricultural practice higher asset possession helps to create interest and awareness about it among farmers; again, it is quite obvious that number of trainings received create more awareness about organic farming; and social participation is also influence individuals to aware and adopt this innovative agricultural technology to retrieve soil fertility and maintain long term sustainability of agricultural farm. Therefore, H 1: there is no relationship between socio-economic variable (Asset possession, Training received, and social participation) and awareness level on all organic technology is rejected. In the studies of Patra et al (2023) [13] showed knowledge level of maize growers of Nagaland had significant relationship with their age, family size, mass media, social participation and education had significant relationship with their adoption level.

The following section depicted the technology-wise awareness level

Area-wise distribution of level of Awareness level of Selected Respondents

Level of Awareness of overall Organic technologies and association of socio-economic variables

Conclusion

Terai farmers from selected clusters are between of 29 years to 65 years of age group with illiterate to secondary level of education, belongs from 2 member to 10-member family and with 0.33 acre to 3.33-acre land holding. They are having at least one pair of draught animals or sprayer or duster or harrow or pump set or any minor equipment, on an average attended 2 training programmes; engaged with maximum 2 village level organizations. From the results indicating range and mean score, it can be concluded that respondents were having low outside contact, comparatively high average contact to extension personnel and Mass media exposure. Responding farmers were having high level of awareness for nutritional supplementary techniques, plant protection techniques, soil & cultural management techniques, all organic techniques, whereas growth promoting techniques at moderate level. From different types of technologies listed in this study, majority of respondents are aware about avoidance of disease crop, green manuring crop, legume crop, pranamrit, ghanajivamrit, panchyagavya, bio-fertilizer, vermi-compost, oil cake, farmyard manure, azolla, enriched compost, poultry litter, neem cake, cow urine, cow dung slurry, liquid vermi wash and commercial organic liquid, pheromone trap, plant derived solutions, Trichoderma for seed treatment, tobacco based pesticide, leaf extract spray, Azotobacter, Beejamrit, Psedomonoas, Agneyastra, Bramhastra, spray of biofertilizer. The farmers of terai region of West Bengal are not homogeneous in awareness level on organic production technologies. Among selected socio-personal characteristics of sampled terai farmer's asset possession, social participation and training received are significantly correlated with awareness level of organic farming. As it is a general finding that if awareness level is more adoption is more, so, it can be concluded that to raise the level of adoption of organic farming in terai region of West Bengal, training should be given more, the farmers should be encouraged to take membership of social organizations like SHG or farmers' club and to approach well to do farmers at least in the first stages of adoption.

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