Analyzing the Debt Behavior of Farm Households in the Maharashtra State of India

2022 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-117
Author(s):  
Atul Mehta

This paper focuses upon the magnitude of income-based poverty among non-farm households in rural Punjab. Based on the primary survey, a sample of 440 rural non-farm households were taken from 44 sampled villages located in all 22 districts of Punjab.The poverty was estimated on the basis of income level. For measuring poverty, various methods/criteria (Expert Group Criteria, World Bank Method and State Per Capita Income Criterion) were used. On the basis of Expert Group Income criterion, overall, less than one-third of the persons of rural non-farm household categories are observed to be poor. On the basis, 40 percent State Per Capita Income Criteria, around three-fourth of the persons of all rural non-farm household categories are falling underneath poverty line. Similarly, the occurrence of the poverty, on the basis of 50 percent State Per Capita Income Criteria, showed that nearly four-fifths of the persons are considered to be poor. As per World Bank’s $ 1.90 per day, overall, less than one-fifth of rural non-farm household persons are poor. Slightly, less than one-fourth of the persons are belonging to self-employment category, while, slightly, less than one-tenth falling in-service category. On the basis of $ 3.10 per day criteria, overall, less than two-fifth persons of all rural non-farm household categories were living below the poverty line.


ABSTRACT Using cross-sectional data of 245 smallholder rural dairy farmers and propensity score matching, the present study attempted to estimate the treatment effect of changing the breed of cattle (indigenous to crossbred) on changes in labour use in Assam. The analysis indicated that crossbred cattle adopters had higher herd sizes, access to extension services, membership of dairy cooperative society (DCS) and the majority of them are beneficiary of government dairy development programme. The estimation results show that crossbred cattle adopters had significantly higher labour use for selected dairy farming operations. This points out that there was a higher employment prospect in the adoption of crossbred cattle. Additionally, the study pointed out that crossbred cattle adoption was associated with higher employment effect on small to average size farms and farm households with literate farmers. The findings of the study recommend that there is a need for adequate diffusion of breeding technology such as artificial insemination (AI) or deployment of pure-breed exotic bulls in not so easily accessible areas to facilitate the small and medium farmers with crossbred cattle adoption for generating employment along with augmenting productivity and income.


This paper examined the socio-economic profile of farm households in the cotton belt of Rural Punjab. The result revealed that as a whole, more than two-thirds fall in the working-age group of 15-59 years. The average size of the family worked out to be 5.74 and the average size of owned land holdings was 11.50 acres. The data highlights that 34.96 percent were earners, 31.39 percent were earning dependents and 33.65 percent of the persons were dependents. The major proportion (88.46 percent) of total sampled households followed Sikhism and as many as 87.50 percent were from the general category. About 23 percent of the sampled persons were illiterate and literacy levels were found to be positively linked with the size of landholdings. About 34 percent of the heads of sampled farmer households were illiterate and the majority of the heads of sampled farmer households had education below secondary level. None of the heads among marginal farmers had obtained education up to graduation level, whereas, this proportion was 7.41 for the large farmers. The study points out that overall only 11.54 percent of the sampled farm households read the newspaper. There is a need for effective measures which could enhance the educational and awareness levels of farmers and their family members for raising their levels of living.


Food Security ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 975-991
Author(s):  
Stefania Sellitti ◽  
Kate Vaiknoras ◽  
Melinda Smale ◽  
Nelissa Jamora ◽  
Robert Andrade ◽  
...  
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