Constraints faced by the farmers in purchasing process of pesticides for red chilli in Palnadu district of Andhra Pradesh

Introduction

Agriculture is the backbone and dominant sector of the Indian economy. Agricultural sector needs to be on boom if a country like India wants to feed its increasing population, the agricultural sector must be continuously growing, but this is impossible without finding a solution to the pest issues that cause significant crop damage. The usage of chemicals has increased in India as a result of the commercialization of agriculture. Pesticide consumption in India was accounted to 63284 metric tons, whereas in state of Andhra Pradesh it was accounted to 1759 metric tons (Department of plant protection, quarantine, and storage, 2021-22). Pesticide usage increased rapidly for the last 2 decades at 12 per cent each year (Kumar et al., 2017). Growing technologies in agriculture, such as high producing varieties and hybrids, are become more susceptible to pests and diseases. Insects caused greater damage than pathogen and weeds. However, global consumption is around 47.5%, insecticides are around 29.5%, fungicides are 17.5% and the rest accounts for 5.5%. India accounts for 76% of the overall pesticide consumption in comparison to worldwide usage of 44% (KS Rajmohan et al., 2020).Farmers recognized the pesticides importance used for control pests and diseases, thus pesticides usage is more and became integral part of crop production. Pesticides include insecticides, herbicides, nematicides, fungicides, plant growth regulators, and other compounds are important for crop production. Farmers commonly purchase their pesticides from local pesticide dealers and they act a vital in providing the source of information about the products and their distribution function. Dealers influence the quantity and types of pesticides used by farmers in addition to selling them pesticides. Buying decision is a set of many decisions which may involve a product, brand, quality, dealers, time and price. The objective was set to study the buying behaviour of farmers and constraints faced by them in purchasing pesticides.

Materials and Methods

For this study Palnadu district was purposively selected as it occupies first place in chilli area sown in Andhra Pradesh. Three mandals of Palnadu district were selected. Two villages from each mandal totally six villages were identified and from each village 20 farmers were selected randomly, making a sample size of 120 farmers. A well framed schedule was developed based on objectives. The data pertaining to the present study were obtained through survey method and enquiries were made with the help of pre-tested schedules. The present study was related to the agricultural year 2022-23. The secondary data regarding the mandal-wise and village-wise crop acreage details of chilli crop in Palnadu district were collected from the District agriculture officer (DAO) and Mandal agriculture officer (MAO). Descriptive statistics and appropriate statistical tools like Garrett's ranking were employed in the study. Table 2 confers that, 37 per cent of the farmers were illiterate, followed by 26 per cent of the respondents were 10 th standard, 14 per cent of the respondents had education level up to 5 th class, and 11 per cent of the respondents had education level of 7 th class and 7 percent of the respondents had graduation and 5 percent of the respondents had intermediate. The educational status reveals that majority of respondents were illiterate, followed by 10 th standard. The table 3, shows that, among the 120 respondents, 79 per cent of respondents belonged to middle sized family, 21 per cent of respondents were having small size family, It shows that majority of the respondents had medium (4-7 members) sized family. The above table 4, shows that, 49 per cent of sample farmers were of low income group with less than 1 lakh per annum, followed by 40 per cent were having medium income group with 1-3 lakhs per annum, while 11 per cent were in high annual income group with above 3 lakhs. Among the sample farmers higher percentage of the farmers belonging to the low income group. The table 5, shows that, among chilli farmers, small farmers were of 50 per cent having farm size of >2.5-5 acres, 32.5 per cent of the respondents were marginal farmers having farm size of up to 2.5 acres, 11.5 per cent of the respondents were medium farmers having farm size of up to >5-10 acres while the remaining 6 per cent were large farmers having farm size of above 10 acres. It can be inferred that majority of the chilli farmers were having small farm size. The Table 6 indicates that, 57.5 per cent of the respondents are having above 15 years of farming experience, followed by 35 per cent of respondents are having 5-15 years of farming experience while 7.5 per cent of the respondents are having less than 5 years of farming experience. It was inferred that, majority of sample chilli farmers had above 15 years of farming experience. The above Table 7, shows that among sample chilli farmers, 41.5 per cent of respondents were depended on money lenders for credit, 31 per cent were depended on banks, 17.5 per cent were no requirement of credit, and 10 percent were depended on neighbors/friends/relatives. This shows that the majority of chilli farmers depended for credit on money lenders as the process for availing credit from money lenders was easy, quick and they are available nearest to them all the time. The Table 9 showed that, viewing agricultural programmes in TV which recorded a mean score of 2.15 followed by attending agricultural meetings with a mean score of 1.48. Demonstrations, reading farm magazines and journals, attending field days, reading leaflets/ folders/ pamphlets, listening to agricultural programs in radio mean scores of and 1.34, 1.29, 1.20, 1.13, 1.02 respectively. The last rank was given reading newspapers related to agriculture with mean score of 0.67. This shows that the sample farmers were viewing agricultural programs in television as they telecast the programs related to current problems with visuals and recommendations given by the experts. From the above Table 10, Agriculture was the major occupation for 79 per cent of the chilli farmers, followed by Agriculture + Animal husbandry was the other major occupation for 21 per cent of the chilli farmers. This infers that agriculture was the major occupation for most of the farmers. From the above table 11, it shows that the majority (40 per cent) of the respondents had dairy as the secondary occupation, followed by daily labours and non-farm employees with the 29 per cent. The other secondary occupations are sheep/goat rearing and poultry were having 21, 10, percentages respectively. This shows that majority of the farmers were having dairy as their secondary occupation.

Results and Discussions

Socio-economic profile of farmers

Constraints faced by the farmers during pesticides purchase from private dealers and RBK.

The details regarding the constraints faced by the farmers while purchasing pesticides was collected and summed up to get the total scores. Garrett's mean score was calculated from the total score and rankings were given according to it. The data was presented in Table 12. Table 12 show that the high price of the pesticides was ranked first by the chilli farmers with a mean score of 72.2, The last rank was given to the lack of credit availability in the market with mean score of 34. This showed that, high price of pesticide, Preferred brands are not available, High interest on credit, were considered as the primary constraints faced by the farmers. Forced sales of other products with highly demanded pesticides, No reduction in price of pesticides, Variation in price of pesticide brand, Poor quality of products, Offering credit only to some products were also important but not as primary. The least importance was given to lack of credit availability in the market.

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