Livelihood security through organic farming in North East Hill Region of India: an economic analysis
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Date
2020-08
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College of Post Graduate Studies in Agricultural Sciences, CAU-Imphal, Umiam
Abstract
Organic farming has a significant advantage which encompasses environmental protection, increasing farmers' income, reducing external input cost, enhancing social capacity, increasing employment opportunities and enhancing food security by increasing the purchasing power of the people and improve farmers’ livelihood. But despite of being organic by default, no systematic attempt has been made to evaluate the benefits and positive effects of the system in North East Hill region of India and studies comparing the two farming systems, organic and inorganic are lacking. So, the study has been carried out with the objective to analyse the economics of organic farming in selected crops, assess the livelihood security of organic and inorganic farm households and identify the factors affecting livelihood security of the same. A sample of 150 respondents were selected from Sikkim and another 150 respondents were selected from Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura considering the highest area under cereal, pulses, spices, vegetables and oilseed crops through multistage random sampling. Defined standard techniques for calculating cost and returns were employed to work out the economics of different selected crops, CARE index was adopted to assessed the livelihood security and Ordered logistic regression model was employed to identify the factors affecting the livelihood security. The study revealed that the average age of the farmer respondents were 48.50 years and a sample household composed of 5 members approximately. The average literacy rate was 79.26 per cent. The overall operational land holding was 0.62 ha. The study further revealed that organic farming is economically profitable over non-adopter farm across the crops except rice due to cost saving and higher gross income. Education security, economic security, and social security were found to be high for the organic adopters with the score of 0.40, 0.38 and 0.44. About 36 per cent, 39.33 per cent and 24.67 per cent of the organic adopters were in low, moderate and high level of livelihood security. Landholding positively influenced the livelihood security of the organic adopters while access to market and households who do not possessed livestock negatively influenced the same. Similarly, total farm income and landholding positively influenced the livelihood security of the non- adopters whereas household size and access to market had negative influenced on livelihood security. The study concluded that organic farming is economically beneficial and can enhanced the livelihood security. Hence it is recommended that organic farming must be popularised through the extension agents of the respective states among the farmers and other stakeholders in agriculture.
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Keywords
Economic analysis, Socioeconomic development