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ThesisItem Open Access A STUDY ON CONTRACT FARMING IN KUMAON DIVISION OF UTTARAKHAND(G. B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar-263145, 2023-02) Paliwal, Gargi; AmardeepAgriculture is the backbone of Indian economy as 54.6 per cent of Indian population depends directly on agriculture and allied activities.(Census 2011). Agriculture has been an integral part of different phases of human civilization but its form and approaches have change over period. Like primitive agriculture that was basically dependent on natural resources, gradually converted into modern agriculture as per the demand of changing scenario. Subsistence agriculture now become an enterprise and moving towards business mode. Over the time innovative approach is adopted in agriculture sector also, and contract farming was introduced that became blessing for those farmers who were vulnerable to uncertainty and risk related to fluctuation in price, market risk, unavailability of proper extension service and inappropriate and timely supply of farm inputs. A contract-farming is seen as a promising alternative that obliges a firm to supply inputs, credit, or extension in exchange for an agreement that fixes a price for the product and binds the farmer to follow a particular input and production method. Contract farming is defined as a form of vertical coordination between producers and the contract farming companies where the company directly influences the production decisions and exercises some control at the production point under the obligation of purchasing certain quantity of produce at specific price from the producers. The quantity and price relate to delivery of specific quality produce at designated location and for a period of time is pre-determined. Contract farming is a viable option for farming as this state is facing problem of erratic climatic conditions, lack of local market, limited input supply and improper transport facility add additional risk in produce supply and sale of produce at reasonable price. Inappropriate infrastructural problem persists in hilly terrain without which it becomes tough to carry out agricultural production and marketing in a profitable manner. The present investigation entitled “A study on Contract farming in Kumaon Division of Uttarakhand” was undertaken to study the socio-personal, economic, psychological, and communication characteristics of contract farmers, attitude of farmers towards contract farming, satisfaction level of farmers towards extension services, impact of contract farming, relationship between selected characteristics of contract farmers with impact of contract farming, and constraints faced by farmers engaged in contract farming system. The study was conducted in Kumaon Division of Uttarakhand.Two districts i.e.Udham Singh Nagar and Nainital were purposively selected. 200 farmers engaged in contract farming in four blocks (two blocks from each district) were selected using Simple random sampling method. The descriptive research design was used to meet the objectives of the study and data was collected through Pre-tested interview schedule. The findings of the study revealed that, maximum number of contract farmers belonged to middle aged group(48.00%), majority of them were male (64.50%), had education up to intermediate level(43.50%). It was also reported that majority of farmers had marginal land holding (64.50%), belonged tosmall area under contract farming category (80.50%), and lower income group (91.50%), had medium information seeking behaviour (64.50%), low mass media exposure (50.00%), and low level of social participation (91.00%), had medium level of scientific orientation (77.50%), medium level of economic motivation (66.00%), had medium level of risk orientation (53.50%), and medium decision making ability (88.00%), had more favourable attitude towards contract farming (52.50%), were satisfied with the extension services provided under contract farming system (71.50%), and had medium level of innovativeness (43.00%). The results revealed that there was significant increase in production of crops such as Rice, Chicory, Turmeric, Chilli, Ginger and Lemongrass after contract farming. Sold quantity of crops such as Rice, Chicory, Turmeric, Chilli, Coriander, Garlic, Ginger and Lemongrass increased significantly after contract farming. It was also found that farm income, net farm income, crop insurance, KCC, market information, subsidy availed, engagement in agri-business activities, use of cold storage facility, health care, technical advice availed and training attended had significantly increased after contract farming. Regarding relationship of selected socio-economic, communication and psychological characteristics of contract farmers with impact of contract farming, it was found social participation, innovativeness, scientific orientation, risk orientation, and decision making ability were significantly associated with impact of contact farming. Major constraints faced by the farmers under contract farming system were problem of insect, pest and diseases (71.00%), scarcity of water for irrigation (67.50%) and scarcity of labour during peak periods (61.50%).ThesisItem Open Access A comparative study on adoption of conservation agriculture practices by wheat growing farmers in Northern India(G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, District Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand. PIN - 263145, 2022-09) Bardhan, Tannishtha; Bhardwaj, NeelamPost green revolution era has countersigned a number of alterations and challenges in Indian agriculture due to practicing of intensive cultivation techniques. Sustainability issues with respect to agro-ecology and soil health were questioned seriously.The multifaceted interaction of population growth, technological advancement and climate change cripples Indian agriculture to a great extent. Conservation Agriculture (CA) practices were looked upon as next best alternative to regain sustainability. Conservation Agriculture (CA) as defined by FAO (2014) is an approach to manage agro-ecosystems for improved and sustained productivity, increased profits and food security while preserving and enhancing the resource base and the environment.Understanding the prospects of CA, significant efforts have been made by CGIAR institutes in close collaboration with National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES) resulting in its adoption in the Indo-Gangetic plains of India.But even after 15 years of introduction of CA technologies, majority of the Indian farmers are still partially adopting CA techniques. Small and marginal farmers are still the untouched segment with respect to adoption of CA practices. Behavioural change among the farmers can be inculcated by altering the existing attitude of farmers towards CA practices. Keeping all these issue in the frontline the present research study was undertaken. Punjab and Haryana being the wheat basket of India introduced the cultivation of Zero-tilled wheat in the last decade as these two states were facing the problems of depleting ground water table, formation of hard pan under soil, enhanced soil salinity, residue burning issues and nutrient deficiency. These factors directly or indirectly swayed the sporadic adoption of CA practices in rice-wheat cropping system in these two states. For that reason, the states of Punjab and Haryana were selected purposively for the study keeping in mind the fact that a good information and data can be generated about CA adopter and non-adopter farmers. One district from each state was purposively selected i.e. Karnal in Haryana and Ludhiana from Punjab. From each selected districts, two blocks were again purposively chosen based on the afore-mentioned criteria. In present study, three villages from each block were picked up through Simple Random Sampling without replacement method. Ten CA adopter farmers and ten CA non-adopter farmers were randomly selected from each village and thus total sample size was 240. The present study concluded that CA adopter farmers differed significantly from CA non-adopter farmers with respect to majority of the socio-economic, communicational and psychological attributes. Majority of the CA non-adopters being small and marginal farmers were having least risk taking ability to make a shift from conventional tillage based practices to zero tilled cultivation. This variation in the socio-economic attributes affect the innovation decision and adoption process of the farmers. Comparing with the non-adopter farmers, CA adopters were having better knowledge and more favourable outlook towards CA practices in wheat. Impact of different behavioural drivers on the adoption of CA e h t g n i v i e c r e p , e d u t i t t a e v i t i s o p g n i v a H . g n i l l e d o M l a n o i t a u q E l a r u t c u r t S g n i s u s p u o r g g n i m r a f e h t h t o b r o f d e i d u t s s a wu sefulness of this technology and comprehending the relative advantage of CA over tillage based cultivation mainly influenced the intention and behaviour of the CA adopter farmers. While for non-adopter farmers, apart from attitude, perceived usefulness and relative advantage of CA, subjective norms also played a significant role in shaping the intention to adopt the new technology. The study also summarized that the benefits as perceived by the adopter farmers could be divided into two groups: economical and environmental. Perceptual mapping of perceived benefits revealed that major beneficial aspects of CA are improvement in the soil health, decline in the cost of cultivation, lodging resistance of wheat, climate resilience and improvement in the grain quality. On the other hand, the bottlenecks like greater weed and pest infestation, stereotypic mind set of the farmers, limited access to productive resources, lack of proper information etc, pulled back non-adopter farmers to try and practice CA practices in wheat. The study also documented some plausible strategies from subject matter experts to overcome these barriers. The study findings emphasize on the fact that blanket application of CA practices is not a feasible option and hence policy makers should rethink and realign the approaches and develop suitable framework to promote CA practices holistically. The strategies must be need based, demand driven, tailored to specific locale and target oriented and then only it could help in achieving sustainability and resiliency of thefarm and the farming system as a whole
