Self-Sufficiency of Rice Consumption and Farm Entrepreneurship of Operating Farmers in Rural Areas of West Bengal, India: An Empirical Interpretation from Socio-Personal, Agro-Economic, Socio-Psychological and Communicative Variables

Abstract

Aims: The major objectives of the study are to elucidate the distributive characters of operating farms in the selected locale of the study, to delineate a micro level policy so that the constraints of the operating farms can be analyzed and intervention programmes can be operationally described, to estimate and analyze the nature and direction of interaction among the independent and dependent variables. Study Design: The locale was selected by purposive as well as simple random sampling techniques and the respondents following rice cultivation had been interacted and were selected by the simple random sampling method. Place of Study: Village Rasulpur of Memari-1 block of Purba Bardhaman district in West Bengal was purposively selected for the study. Methodology: In this study 50 respondents following rice cultivation have been interacted and are selected by the simple random sampling method. A preliminary interview schedule has been administered to understand the knowledge, perception and attitude of the people towards climate changes concept, communication and extension system, farm enterprises, challenges faced during rice production. The collected data had been put into multivariate analysis. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences V20.0 (SPSS) of IBM was used for correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, step-down regression analysis, path analysis and factor analysis. Results: Independent variables economic land (x7), group interaction (x11), innovation proneness (x13) and market orientation (x14) have been found to exert strong and determining contribution to estimate dependent variable self-consumption of rice production (y) and the set of economic and ecological variables as selected for the study. Conclusion: It can be concluded that the dynamics of self-sufficiency of food grains and entrepreneurship, here in case of rice enterprises, are dominantly relying on the entrepreneurs’ behavioural characters, the group interaction they are experiencing, the economic land they are possessing, the electricity consumption level, and the fuel use efficiency, innovation proneness and market interaction.