Socio-Economic Profiling of Tribal Dairy Farmers in Northern Hills Zone of Chhattisgarh

Abstract

Chhattisgarh is traditionally known as the Rice Bowl of Central India. Chhattisgarh state has one of highest shares of Scheduled Tribe (ST) population within a state, accounting for about 10 per cent of the STs in India. Scheduled Castes and STs together constitute more than 50 per cent of the state’s population. Agriculture is counted as the chief economic occupation of the state. About 80% of the population of the state is rural and the main livelihood of the villagers is agriculture and agriculture-based small industry. This exploratory study was conducted in the tribal populated districts of Chhattisgarh state. In this paper, socio-economic profile of tribal farmers are discussed in detail. About 65.33 percent of the tribal farmers were between 36 and 50 years of age group, more than one fourth (34.67%) of the farmers were educated up to primary school level, less than half  (39.00%) of the respondents had subsistence dairy farming + Minor forest products collection + labour as their sole occupations, nearly half (43.67%) of the respondents were marginal farmers, more than half (62.00 %) of the farmers were found with medium level of farming experience, about half (49.00 %) of the respondents were at the income range of Rs. 25,001 to Rs. 75,000, about half (44.67 %) of the respondents falling under the category of medium herd size followed by 35.67 percent in small and 19.66 percent in large herd size, more than half (56.33%) of the tribal dairy farmers falling under the category of subsistence level of dairy production system.