Influence of Socio-economic Attributes of Groundnut Growers on Adoption of Various Farm Practices in Balasore District of Odisha, India
Priyanka Priyadarsani Giri
Department of Agricultural Extension & Communication, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, S’O’A Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.
Bijoy Kumar Mohanty
Department of Agricultural Extension & Communication, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, S’O’A Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.
Saumyesh Acharya *
Department of Agricultural Extension, Institute of Agriculture, Visva-Bharati (A Central University), Sriniketan-731236, West Bengal, India.
Swaraj Preetam Das
Department of Agricultural Extension & Communication, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, S’O’A Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.
Bikram Kumar
Department of Agricultural Extension & Communication, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, S’O’A Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
In the coastal state of Odisha (India), Groundnut covers a larger part of oilseed cultivation giving a sustainable source of income for the farmers. It provides nutritional as well as economic benefits for the consumers. Nevertheless, the groundnut growers faced many constraints across the stages of production and harvesting across Odisha. Thus, it is an essential move to promote the adoption of suitable technologies to maximize groundnut cultivation. The research design selected for the study was ex post facto design. One hundred twenty (120) respondents were selected from three blocks of the Balasore district of Odisha following the random sampling method. The correlation coefficients found that farmers having higher social participation were actively adopting cultivation practices in groundnut. The results from multiple regression found that the nine independent variables together have contributed 61.10 percent of the variance in the consequent variable, adoption of groundnut cultivation practices and revealed that socio-economic attributes such as extension contact, social participation, holding size and education found to be positively and significantly influence the adoption rate in groundnut cultivation.
Keywords: Adoption, education, extension contact, groundnut cultivation, land holding, social participation