Perception of farmers about dairy farming

Introduction

The importance of dairy farming in India cannot be overlooked. India is the largest producer of milk in the world and the dairy farming provides opportunity of incremental income especially to the small and marginal farmers. The milk production of India has been increased to 198.4 million tonnes in 2019-20 from 239.3 million tonnes in 2024-25. There are more than 70 million rural household engaged in dairy farming in India. The strength of women in dairy has reached to the 75 per cent of the total work force. So dairy can also be an effective means for empowering the women farmers of the country. Gujarat ranks among the top five milk producing state in the country. Milk production in Gujarat during the year 2023-24 was 18.31 million tonnes and its share in country's milk production was 7.65 per cent. The successful case of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation resulted in quadrupling the income of dairy farmers in last seven years. But this largest milk cooperative found stagnation in the production of milk especially in Mehsana district on account of industrialisation and raising prosperity of urban area. The average milk procured by the union outside Gujarat stood at 9 lakh litres per day in June 2023 with over 8 lakh litres coming from Rajasthan and another 60000 litres from Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Therefore, it is clearly understood that the milk production in Mehsana district is decreasing since last decade. On the other hand, Kachchh district is known for its cattle population. Therefore, the study was designed to compare the perception of farmers about dairy farming in two different districts with following specific objectives: 1. To study the profile of the respondents 2. To know the perception of the farmers regarding dairy farming

Materials and Methods

For the present study Mehsana and Kachchh districts were selected. A multistage random sampling design was adopted for data collection. From Mehsana district 2 talukas were selected randomly. Five villages from each taluka and 15 farmers from each village were selected randomly. Thus 150 respondents were randomly selected from Mehsana district. In same way 2 talukas were randomly selected from Kachchh district and from each taluka five villages and from each village 15 farmers were randomly selected. Thus from Kachchh district also 150 respondents were selected and accordingly total 300 respondents were randomly selected for the study from these two districts. The data were collected with the help of well-structured interview schedule. The data collected were analysed in the light of the objectives for meaningful interpretation.

Results and Discussion

Selected characteristics of the farmers

The data regarding the age of the respondents are presented in table 1. From the table it can be observed that most of the respondents from both the districts were middle aged i.e. 36 -50 years of age. There are slightly more young farmers in Kachchh (24.67%) district as compared to Mehsana (18.67%), showing an interest of the youth for the dairy sector. There is a scope for the extension personnel to channelize this interest in appropriate manner so that they can sustain their livelihood through dairy farming. There were more than one fourth respondents from both the district in the old age group, in Mehsana it was 26.00 percent and in Kachchh it was 30.00 percent. In case of education 68.67 percent respondents of Mehsana district had higher secondary or above level education, where as in Kachchh it was somewhat low (44.66%) in the same group, indicating farmers of Mehsana district can understand higher level of abstraction and technicalities. The table indicates that special care must be taken when designing the extension message for the dairy farmers of Kachchh district, as there is slightly low level of education among the respondents. From Figure 1 it can be observed that most of the respondents of both the districts had medium size of herd, i.e. up to 10 animals. On the other hand, 28.00 percent of the respondents from Mehsana district and 26.00 percent of the respondents from Kachchh district had herd size up to 4 animals. In compression of two districts, Kachchh district had higher proportion of respondents in large size herd category, indicating more conviction towards dairy farming. From table 3 it can be observed that most of the respondents (84.00%) from Mehsana district had marginal to semi medium land holding. If we took a closer look of the table, we can find that respondent of Kachchh district had comparatively larger holding than Mehsana district. The overall data of the table indicate that dairy farming is well satisfactory for the small and semi medium farmers. From the table below it can be concluded that most of the respondents in Mehsana (65.33%) and Kachchh (58.00%) district had medium level of experience in dairy farming.

Almost one fifth of the respondents from both the districts had 10 years of experience of dairy farming. There were 12.67 percent and 17.33 percent of respondent from www.extensionjournal.com Mehsana and Kachchh district respectively in high level of experience group. From the above table it can be concluded that the respondent had quite good experience in managing dairy farm. There is sufficient proportion of respondent in both the districts who can guide the young dairy farmers, extension personnel can take this opportunity of using these informal resource persons. Table 5 represents the source of information used by the respondents for agricultural information. It is clear from the table that respondents from both the districts were mostly using input dealer as the source of information. The next most important source of information was internet and other social media. Considerable portion of the respondents from both the districts was using internet or social media as the source of information. Extension personnel can take this opportunity to reach out the farmers. The government agencies such as KVKs and ATMAs had average preference as source of information. This may be due to ease of accessibility of the private dealers and internet than the government organisations. The other important sources of information for the respondents were Village Level Extension Workers, television and newspaper. It can be concluded from Figure 2 that most of the respondents from Mehsana (85.33%) and Kachchh (88.00%) districts had medium to high level of economic motivation. All the respondents were engaged in diary but not only diary alone, they were also engaged in agriculture to maximise their profit by diversify their investment, which indicate their economic motivation. The mean economic motivation of the respondents was 14.83 and the standard deviation was 4.35.

Perception of farmers regarding dairy farming

To measure the perception of the dairy farmers a scale developed by Shiroya (2014) was used with some modifications. The data in this regard are presented in table 6. It can be concluded from the table below that most of the respondents had medium level of perception in both the district. In Mehsana district 85.33 percent of the respondents and in Kachchh district 88.00 percent of the respondents had medium to high level of perception which indicates a positive perception of the respondents towards dairy farming. This may be due to dairy farming produce additional gainful income to them with less uncertainty. When we applied a Chi square test for homogeneity, we found that both the districts had homogenous perception regarding dairy farming. As the calculated chi square value is less than the critical value at 2 degree of freedom so we can accept the null hypothesis that there is no difference in both the samples. To assess the relation between the independent variables and the perception we used correlation coefficient. The result is presented in Table 7. Among the selected characteristics studied four variables were found significant with the perception of dairy farmers. These variables were economic motivation, herd size, education level and experience of the dairy farmers. The positive non-significant correlation of age (0.105) and land holding (0.119) observed in the present study may be attributed to the fact that these socio-economic variables definitely will not have any bearing on the perception of respondents. The highly significant positive correlation coefficient of economic motivation (0.437) and significant correlation of herd size (0.376), education level (0.275) and experience of the dairy farmers (0.254) with perception of dairy farmers may lead to conclusion that these socioeconomic independent variables play a pivotal role in increasing the dependent variable.

Chi square test result

Conclusion

From the study it can be concluded that most of the respondents were middle aged group followed by young age, had higher secondary level of education, low to medium level of farming experience, had small size of land holding and medium to high level of economic motivation. Farmers from both the districts had similar perception about dairy farming and it was of medium level. Four important variables were found significant with the perception and these four variables were economic motivation, herd size, education level and experience of the dairy farmers.

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