CAPACITY BUILDING OF RURAL WOMEN IN HOMESTEAD GARDEN FOR SUSTAINABLE HORTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

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Date
2017-07
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AAU, Jorhat
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The present investigation on capacity building of rural women in homestead garden for sustainable horticultural development was carried out in two agro-climatic zones of Assam. A multi stage purposive cum simple random sampling design was followed for selection of sample. One district from each zone namely Sivasagar district of Upper Brahmaputra Valley Zone and Kamrup (R) district of Lower Brahmaputra Valley Zone were selected randomly. Total 300 rural women from 12 villages of the selected zones and who were mostly engaged in fruits and vegetable cultivation were selected as respondents for the present study. Data collection was done by using structured interview schedules. The study revealed that majority of the rural women (54.00 %) were of middle aged group, married (87.67%), educated upto middle school level(54.32%), had farming as their main occupation (67.25%), had less than 1 hectares of cultivable land (70.33 %), had more membership in group organizations (65.81 %), had poor contact with extension personnel (87.33%) , took agricultural advice from friends and neighbours (58.10%), had not attended any intervention programme (57.62%). Among the rural women who had attended intervention programme earlier, majority 85.03 percent attended on the aspect piggery. Majority of the rural women had independent participation in selected farm and non-farm activities such as transplanting and weeding (79.02%), weeding (66.00%), cooking (65.66%) and weaving (69.67%). Majority (74.67 %) of rural women took independent decision on amount of food to be kept for consumption, preservation of fruits and vegetables (41.00 %) and weaving (73.64%). Majority of rural women had low level of knowledge in aspects like nursery raising (76.30%), land preparation (67.00%), production practices (80.00%) and plant protection (52.70%). The problems faced by rural women in participating in different horticultural activities which got first ranks in their respective categories of problem were lack of irrigation facility, growth retardation of plants due to higher weed growth, high cost of labour, lack of proper training, household workload and natural calamities. The outcome of the intervention programmes indicated that there were changes in knowledge gain and retention in rural women and technology adoption behavior. The knowledge retention by rural women in three aspects of production technologies of fruit and vegetable crops namely plant protection, nutritional management and land preparation were given first, second and third ranks after analysis. In case technology adoption, aspects plant protection measures, nutrient management and nursery raising practices got the first, second and third ranks respectively.
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