Challenges in Clean Milk Production: A Comprehensive look at Constraints faced by Dairy Farmers in North Gujarat and Their Profile
International Journal of Development Research
Challenges in Clean Milk Production: A Comprehensive look at Constraints faced by Dairy Farmers in North Gujarat and Their Profile
Received 11th September, 2023; Received in revised form 16th October, 2023; Accepted 03rd November, 2023; Published online 28th December, 2023
Copyright©2023, Nirali H.Usadadiya et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Socio-personal characteristics of the respondents viz- age, education, farm experience, Size of family, herd size, land holding, annual income, extension participation, source of information, risk orientation, economic motivation was studied. A multistage, purposive and random sampling technique was selected for the study. The present investigation was carried out in North Gujarat. Three districts of North Gujarat viz., Banaskantha, Sabarkantha and Mehsana were purposively selected for the study. From each selected district, three talukas and two villages from each selected taluka were randomly selected for the study. Thus, eighteen villages were selected from the nine selected talukas. From each village, ten dairy farmers were randomly selected as respondents. Thus, total 180 respondents were selected for the study. Half of the dairy farmers were middle aged (50.55 %) and had high school and above level education (49.99 %). Overwhelming majority (89.45 %) of the dairy farmers had up to 4 family members. Nearly half of the dairy farmers had medium herd size (47.22 %) and high level of dairy farming experience (53.89%). Little more than three-fifths (61.12 %) of the dairy farmers were marginal and small farmers and nearly half (47.78 %) of the dairy farmers had annual income ranging from ₹5,00,001 to ₹1,00,000.More than two-thirds of the dairy farmers had medium extension participation (70.00 %), medium level of utilization of information sources (66.67 %), medium risk orientation (69.45 %) and medium economic motivation (70.00%). The major constraints faced by the dairy farmers were in adoption of clean milk production practices; lack of incentives for clean milk, lack of capital for pucca animal shed, suggestions endorsed by the dairy farmers were in adoption of clean milk production practices; subsidy should be provided for purchasing disinfectants and detergents required for clean milk production.
