Preferential Pattern of Rural Women for Crop Diversification in the Villages of Hisar District

Abstract

India is a country of about one billion people. More than 70 percent of India's population lives in rural areas where the main occupation is agriculture. Indian agriculture is characterized by small farm holdings. The average farm size is only 1.57 hectares. Around 93 percent of farmers have land holdings smaller than 4 ha and they cultivate nearly 55 percent of the arable land. Due to diverse agro-climatic conditions in the country, a large number of agricultural items are produced. Crop diversification is intended to give a wider choice in the production of a variety of crops in a given area so as to expand production related activities on various crops and also to lessen risk. Crop diversification in India is generally viewed as a shift from traditionally grown less remunerative crops. Crop diversification and also the growing of large number of crops are practised in rain fed lands to reduce the risk factor of crop failures due to drought and less rains. Diversification originated from the word ‘Diverge’ which means to move or extend in a different direction from a common point. Crop diversification is essential for an agricultural based economy like Haryana to meet the cash needs of the family as well as to combat risk associated with mono-cropping. Moreover the state is facing problems of decreasing size of farm holdings, decreasing cultivable area, increasing soil salinity as well as rising water tables, imbalanced use of fertilizers and micro-nutrient deficiency, harsh climate, low forest cover (3.52%), considerable area still under rain fed farming (19%), lack of required processing and value addition facilities, storage constraints and off late shortage of labour for farming operations. All these factors are adversely affecting productivity enhancement. Traditionally diversification was used more in the context of a subsistence kind of farming, wherein farmers grew many crops on their farm. The household level food security as also risk was in important consideration in diversification. The farmers with smaller (< 2.0 hac.) farms do practice diversified farming. On quite small holdings often fragmented farmers nation wide allocate their land among seasonal crops, fruits and vegetables ,dairy and perhaps poultry to maximise their household labour utilization and income but the role of women in diversification is still not visible. Keeping all this in view preferential pattern of rural women for crop diversification was studied. The experiment was carried in Bandaheri and Burak villages of Hisar II block of district Hisar, Haryana. Data were collected with the help of structured interview schedule.