Livelihood status of tribal farmers of Chikhaldara taluka of Melghat region

Abstract

The present study on “Study the profile and relation of tribal farmers of Chikhaldara taluka of melghat region for livelihood status” was conducted in the Chikhaldara taluka of Melghat region of Amravati district of Maharashtra state. The exploratory design of social research was used for the study. Total 150 tribal farmers were selected as sample for study by stratified sampling method. The data were collected by conducting personal interview of each tribal farmers with help of structured interview schedule. Careful analysis, tabulation and classification of the data were done. The findings of independent variable show that, it is concluded that, 48.67 percent of the tribal farmers had belong to middle age group. 53.33 percent of tribal farmers had completed higher school. The distribution pertaining to land holding indicates that 63.33 percent of tribal farmers had small type of land holding of 1 to 2 ha. More than one third of tribal farmers (44.00%) had agriculture + Labour type of occupation. In case of farming experience, 50.66 percent of tribal farmers had more 20 years for farming experience, 71.33 percent of the respondents had medium family size (4 to 6 members). 40.67 percent of the tribal farmers had Rs 87000-118000 annual Income. They had low source of information 88.67 percent. In case of type of soil most of the tribal farmers had shallow and moderately deep type of soil for cultivation. 30.66 percent had no source of irrigation for cultivation. Almost all the tribal farmers from chikhaldara talukas followed the cropping pattern i.e. Tur, Maize, Rice, Soybean in kharif season. Out that 74.00 percent of tribal farmers followed wheat and gram cropping pattern in rabi season and 14.67 percent of the tribal farmers followed maize and summer groundnut as cropping pattern in summer season.73.33 percent of the tribal farmers had 110 to 160 percent cropping intensity. In case of livestock possession 30.00 percent of tribal farmers had poultry as a livestock possession. In case of psychological variable, they had low innovativeness and economic motivation it has found to be 66.67 percent and 48.00 percent respectively and 98.67 percent of tribal farmers had low social participation. Among the selected independent variables namely age, education, occupation, farming experience, annual income, source of irrigation, cropping pattern, cropping intensity, innovativeness and economic motivation were found to be positively significant with livelihood status of the tribal farmers at 0.05 level of probability and land holding, family size, source of information, soil type and livestock possession were found to be positively and highly significant with livelihood status of the tribal farmers at 0.01 level of probability therefore the null hypothesis were rejected for these variables, While the variable social participation did not show any significant association with the livelihood status of the tribal farmers, therefore the null hypothesis was accepted for these variables.