A STUDY OF THE FARMING SYSTEMS IN KANDI AREA OF JAMMU REGION

The present study entitled, 'A study of the Farming systems in Kandi area of Jammu region' was conducted in subtropical region of Jammu, Kathua, Rajouri and Udhampur districts with a sample size of 240 respondents. The respondents were drawn from sixteen Panchayats of eight blocks from four selected districts. The study aimed at identifying the distinct farming systems, their economics, and bottlenecks faced by the respondents in different farming systems prevalent in the subtropical Kandi belt. The findings of the study revealed that 72.50% of the farmers were marginal having land holding less than one hectare. The average age of the respondents was 51.99 years and the average holding was 0.76 ha (15.27 kanal). The cropping pattern of the area included maize and bajra in Kharif, Wheat and Mustard in Rabi and mash in Zaid season. The cropping intensity of the area was 165.70. Four Farming systems viz FS-1 (Crops + Livestock), FS-2 (Crops+ Livestock+ Horticulture), FS-3 (Crops + Livestock + Sericulture) and FS-4 (Crops +Livestock+ Goatry) were identified in the selected area. FS-1 was practiced by 60.41%, FS-2 by 21.25%, FS-3 by 6.67% and FS4 by 11.67% of the respondents. Economics was computed in terms of benefit cost ratio for different farming systems. Food crops like maize and wheat had a much lower b: c ratio than pulse crop (mash), and oil seed (mustard). Over all FS-2 comprising of Crops +Livestock + Horticulture had the highest b: c ratio of 1.56. FS-3 and FS-4 had low benefit cost ratio. The major bottlenecks faced by the respondents in FS-1 included high cost of inputs (72.91%), low profit (71.25%), lack of proper knowledge about improved varieties, seed rate and spacing (59.17%). In case of livestock high cost of animal feed (82.50%) and lack of timely visit by veterinary professionals (82.08%) were perceived as the major bottlenecks. In horticulture (FS-2) the important bottlenecks faced by the respondents were lack of processing and value addition facilities (92.15%), lack of knowledge about safe methods of preservation, lack of post harvest structure and non availability of credit (84.31%) each. In silkworm rearing (FS-3) lack of regulated market (87.50%), low price of the cocoons (81.25%) and lack of knowledge about silkworm disease management (75%) were the important bottlenecks faced by the respondents. In FS-4 the major bottlenecks were non availability of cross bred breeds (75%) and non availability of credit (67.85%). Although the government has started various programmes for agriculture and allied, but the farmers had low awareness regarding these programmes as a result of which they were unable to get the benefits from these developmental programmes. Only 17.90% of the respondents were aware of the Kissan Credit Card and 23.70% had awareness about Crop Insurance scheme.

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