Study on grassland dependent communities of Amrit Mahal Kaval, Karnataka State

Abstract

A research study was conducted in Chitradurga district during 2022-23 using a Retrospective survey design. Data was collected by personal interview using pre tested standardized schedule through ODK collect software using tablets with sample size constituted of 300 farmers. The findings revealed that nearly half of the respondents (46.26%) belonged to middle age group (31-50 years), 27.05 per cent were illiterates and 34.52 per cent of them belonged to backward caste. Majority (72.95%) of the respondents lived in nuclear family, more than half of the them (51.96%) belonged to the medium family size (5-8 members) category, had medium level of farming experience (63.35%) and had two farmers in their family engaged in farming (57.65%). Regarding landholdings, nearly half of the respondents (48.35% and 56.63%) had marginal rainfed and irrigated landholdings respectively. More than half of the respondents (56.23%) belonged to high income category and nearly half of the respondents’ incomes from livestock (42.35%) fall under low category. More than half of the respondents (66.90%) kept herd size below 6 ACU and owned diverse combinations of livestock. Most of the respondents (56.23% and 41.99%) had low mass media media and social participation respectively. Cotton, ragi, maize and groundnuts were the main crops grown by the respondents and long duration crops grown were arecanut and coconut. Significant differences were observed in all the socio-economic parameters of grassland dependent communities over the period of 20 years as observed by paired ‘t’ value showing significance at 0.01 level except for the number of small ruminants possessed by the respondents where the differences were insignificant.