Socio-economic Profile of Fruits and Vegetable Growers: An After the Fact Research

Abstract

India is the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in world. The fruits and vegetables production will give a positive hope to small and marginal farmers to increase their income compared to food grains. The productions of horticulture crops can improve the socio-economic status of farmers in short span due to their high value. The present study was conducted in Davangere district of Karnataka to know the socio-economic characteristics of the fruit and vegetable growers.  The study has used Expost facto research design. The study was conducted by taking total sample of 120 viz., 40 farmers each from public, co-operative and private market interventions. The data was collected with help of pre tested interview schedule through personal interview. The majority of farmers had medium level of education in public (75.00%), co-operative (72.50%) and private (72.50%) market interventions. More than half the respondents had medium  level of decision making ability in public (72.50%) and private (77.50%) market interventions but half of the had medium level (50.00%) of decision making ability in case of co-operative market intervention. The majority of the respondents belonged to medium level (87.50%) of market orientation in private market intervention. More than half of the farmers had medium level (77.50%) of information seeking behavior in case of public market intervention. The variables like education and information seeking behavior were found to be significantly associated with respect to knowledge level of public market intervention farmers. Cosmopoliteness was found to be significantly associated with respect to knowledge level of both co-operative and private market intervention farmers.