Farmers’ perception regarding livestock services delivered by the Banas Milk Cooperative Union

Introduction

Diary cooperatives play a significant role in delivering the livestock services in rural areas of Gujarat. The success of dairy cooperatives in Gujarat is also depends on the quality of services provided by these cooperatives. The dairy cooperatives in Gujarat provides many livestock services to its members like, organizing cattle camp, first aid, treatment of cases, visits, AI etc. Though the cooperatives provide huge potential for growth and development, the institution can be evaluated by the quality of its services delivered to its members. A significant improvement can be achieved by studying the perception of the members of the cooperatives about the services delivered by these cooperatives. Hence the present study has been designed to explore and address the perception of the dairy farmers about livestock services delivered by the dairy cooperatives with the following objectives: Objectives 1. To study the profile of the dairy farmers 2. To study the perception of the dairy farmers about the livestock services delivered by Banas dairy

Methodology

The present study was conducted in Banaskantha district of Gujarat, as the district ranks first in daily milk collection in the state. The Banas Milk Cooperative Union operates in the district successfully. It has almost 1200 cooperatives working in the district. The multistage sampling technique was used in present study. From Banaskantha district three talukas, namely Deesa, Dantiwada and Palanpur were randomly selected. From each taluka five dairy cooperative were randomly identified. The list of members was collected from that identified cooperatives and 20 members were selected randomly from that list. Thus the total 300 respondents were selected for the present study. The data were collected with the help of a suitable interview schedule by using the method of personal interview. For measurement of perception a structure schedule was used indicating how respondents perceive the livestock services delivered by the Banas milk co-operative union. The data were analyzed by using different descriptive statistics. The data in Table 2 showed that slightly less than two-fifth (38.00%) of the farmers had a secondary level education followed by 31.00and 16.00 per cent of them had primary and higher secondary level education, respectively. Only 03.67 per cent of farmers were illiterate. The data in Table 3 indicated that slightly more than three fifth (60.66%) of the farmers belonged to OBC caste followed by General (29.34%) and SC (10.00%) respectively. The data provided in Table 4 showed that slightly less than half (48.00%) of the farmers had semi-medium land holding followed by 24.33,15.34,08.00 and 04.33 per cent of them had small, marginal, medium and large land holding, respectively. Table 5 indicates that slightly more than one-third (36.33%) of the farmers had a low level of annual income (₹1,50,001 to ₹3,00,000) followed by 27.67 per cent of the farmers had a medium level of annual income (₹3,00,001 to ₹4,50,000), 18.00 per cent of the farmers had very low annual income (up to ₹1,50,000) and 12.67 per cent of the farmers had high level of annual income (₹4,50,001 to ₹6,00,000). Only, 05.33 per cent of farmers had above ₹6,00,000 annual incomes. The data in Table 6 shows that slightly less than half (47.00%) of farmers had 11 to 20 animals in their herd, followed by upto 10 animals and more than 20 animals in their herd with 33.33 per cent and 19.64 per cent, respectively. Table 8 shows that 47.33 per cent of the farmers had medium level of usages of information sources followed by 30.67 per cent of the respondent had high level of information sources usages. Less than one fifth (16.00%) of the respondent had low to very low level of information sources usages. Table 9 shows that slightly more than three-fifth (63.00%) of the farmers had membership in one organization followed by 24.00 per cent of the farmers who had membership in more than one organization and 13.00 per cent of the farmers had membership with office bearer, respectively. This finding can be explained based on the fact that all the respondents had membership of either one or more than one organization. Table 10 inferred that slightly more than half (56.00%) of the farmers had medium economic motivation followed by 30.00 per cent had low and 14.00 per cent had high economic motivation.

Results and Discussion

Significance levels are indicated at 5% (*) and 1% (**)

It is apparent from the data depicted in Table 13 that out of ten independent variables, seven variables viz., education (0.38**), land holding (0.25*), annual income (0.47**), herd size (0.32**), source of information usage (0.51**), social participation (0.28*) and economic motivation (0.45**) had positive and significant relationship with the perception regarding livestock services provided by Banas dairy. Other three independent variables namely age (-0.12), caste (0.08) and experience in livestock farming (-0.15) were found non-significant correlation with their perception regarding livestock services provided by the Banas dairy.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that maximum number of farmers have medium level of socio-economics characteristics. It was found that overall the respondents had a positive perception about the livestock and input services delivered by Banas dairy. The results also show that variables like education, land holding, annual income, herd size, source of information usage, social participation and economic motivation have a positive and significant relationship with their perception regarding livestock services provided by Banas dairy. While variables like age, caste and experience in livestock farming were found non-significant correlation with their perception regarding livestock services provided

Acknowledgement

www.extensionjournal.com by Banas dairy.

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