Livelihood profile of farmers in western region of Maharashtra

摘要

The study was conducted in Satara district of Maharashtra state during the year 2008-09. Karad, Patan, Phaltan,?Khataw and Satara taluks from Satara district were selected for the study based on the criterion of maximum livestock?population holding taluks. From each taluks two villages and from each village 10 farmers were selected randomly. Hence, the?study covered 10 villages from 5 taluks of Satara district to form the sample of 100 respondents. It was found from the study that a high proportion of the respondents (44.00%) belonged to old age group. More than one third of the respondents had?education up to graduation and above (39.00%) level. A large majority of the respondents (89.00%) were having big land holding (>2 ha) while, very negligible per cent of the respondents (1.00 %) were landless. More than three-fourth of the?respondents (77.00%) belonged to big family. As high as 82.00 per cent of the respondents belonged to forward caste while, remaining respondents were from backward caste (10.00%) and scheduled caste (8.00%). All the respondent families were?engaged in livestock production (100%), crop cultivation (99.00%) and 60.00 percent engaged in service (62.00%). Contribution?of livestock production to respondents’ livelihood was highest in Phaltan taluk (33.90%) followed by Satara taluk (26.75%),?Patan taluk (20.58%), Karad taluk (20.51%) and Khataw taluk (18.63%). Most of the respondent families in Karad taluk?(15.00%), Khataw and Satara taluks (11.00% each) and Patan and Phaltan taluks (9.00% each) were having crop cultivation,?livestock and service pattern of livelihood.