Assessment of Profitability and Level of Livelihood Security among Non-adopters of Integrated Farming System in West Bengal, India

Abstract

The primary objective of this research study is to know the livelihood security status of the farmers of Cooch Behar district who are not following Integrated Framing System (IFS). The study was undertaken in six villages of three blocks of Cooch Behar district of West Bengal. A total of 217 farmers were selected using multi-stage purposive cum random sampling procedure, out of which 42 farmers were not following IFS. Data were collected using well-structured questionnaire from September to December of 2021. One dependent variable that is livelihood security and 20 independent variables were selected for the study. The results indicated that most of the farmers (66.68%) were having medium level of livelihood security, followed by equal number of farmers (16.66%) were having low and high level of livelihood security respectively. Majority of the IFS farmers were following the IFS components Crop + fishery (26.29%) and Crop+ Dairy (26.29%) followed by Crop + Dairy + Poultry + Fishery (10.29%) etc.The independent variables family education, annual family income, annual family expenditure, landholding, irrigation status, material possession, information seeking behavior and scientific orientation showed positive and significant relationship and the variables age and family size showed negative but non-significant relationship, with the dependent variable profitability and level of livelihood security. In case of regression analysis r2 value is 0.747 and the variables irrigation status and scientific orientation showed positive and significant relationship with the profitability and level of livelihood security. Over all the abstract concludes that majority of the farmers are not secured their livelihoods due to non-adoption of IFS and there are several important variables like family education, income, credit seeking behaviour and scientific orientation etc were reason behind it.