Browsing by Author "Jayalekshmi, G"

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Climate resilience of peri- urban agriculture in Kerala : a farming system based assessment
(Department of Agricultural Extension Education, College of Agriculture ,Vellayani, 2024-02-12) Pooja Krishna, J; Jayalekshmi, G
The study entitled ‘Climate resilience of peri-urban agriculture in Kerala: A farming system-based assessment’ was conducted from 2019 to 2023 and focused on the climate resilience of peri-urban agriculture in Kerala. The primary objectives were developing the Climate Resilience Index (CRI) for the Agro- Ecological Units (AEUs) of Alappuzha, Palakkad, and Kannur districts, identifying the dimensions of roles played by various developmental departments/institutions in building climate resilience, exploring current impediments in implementation of climate change mitigation measures in agriculture and propose suggestions to overcome the same. The study was conducted in the peri-urban areas of 13 AEUs of Alappuzha, Palakkad, and Kannur districts. From peri-urban areas of each AEU, affected farmers were identified and listed in consultation with officials. From the prepared list, 30 farmers were selected at random. Also, from each district, 20 extension personnel were selected randomly. Thus, a total of 450 respondents comprising 390 farmers and 60 extension personnel were selected for the study. Climate resilience was expressed as the function of the three core dimensions- absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities. Each dimension was studied under five factors viz. physical, environmental/ecological, social, economic, and psychological factors. The absorptive capacity index has been constructed using 31 indicators, adaptive capacity index using 18 indicators, and transformative capacity index using 23 indicators. Thus, a total of 72 indicators were selected for the development of CRI. The procedure for calculating the CRI comprised four steps considering the assumed relationship to climate resilience, normalizing data for comparison, aggregating the indicators across each dimension, and computation of the index.
Digital tools in horizontal spread of agricultural technologies
(Department of Agricultural Extension , College of Agriculture,Vellayani, 2019) Alan Jolly Sebastian; Jayalekshmi, G
The study titled ‘Digital tools in horizontal spread of agricultural technologies: A scenario analysis in Kerala’ was conducted during the year 2018- 2019 with the objectives; to analyse the use of digital tools in horizontal spread of agricultural technologies among farmers and extension agents, to identify the preference of various digital tools among the respondents with regard to its content and to identify the constraints faced by the respondents. The study consisted of 40 farmers and 10 extension agents each from Kannur, Thrissur and Thiruvanathapuram representing the three zones of Kerala resulting a total of 120 farmers and 30 extension agents. The detailed investigation of profile characters of the farmers pointed out that, majority of the farmers (66.67%) were middle aged and less than half (44.17%) had higher secondary level of education; most (70%) of the farmers had high level of cosmopolitenessa and more than half of the farmers (53.33%) had medium level of attitude towards digital tools. Innovativeness of most of the farmers (56.67%) was observed to be high whereas the computer proficiency of 39.19 per cent of farmers was found to be low. Most (56.67%) of the farmers belonged to below mean category of knowledge about digital tools. Television was the most experienced digital tool used by the farmers. Almost all the farmers had accessibility towards tools such as television, mobile phone, internet, social media, e mail and search engines. All the farmers were found to adopt mobile phone and social media. Analysis on the profile characteristics of the extension agents revealed that most (53.33%) of the extension agents were middle aged and 43.33 per cent of the extension agents had degree qualification. Television was the most experienced tool by the extension agents. Most (70%) of the extension agents had high level of attitude and majority (86.67%) had high level of innovativeness. The use of digital tools was found to be most effective for manures and fertilizers application (50%) and plant protection measures (46.67%). Tools like television, mobile phone, internet, social media, e mail, search engines, agricultural websites, mobile agricultural applications and e newspapers were accessible to all extension agents. The results of the study revealed that all farmers were aware about television, mobile phone and social media. Majority of the farmers preferred to use mobile phones (88.33%) followed by social media (64.17%). Mobile phone was found to be the tool mostly used for production purpose by 39.17 per cent farmers. Mobile phone was used by 58.33 per cent of the farmers for plant protection purpose and social media was mostly (82.50%) used for marketing purpose. All extension agents were aware about tools like television, mobile phone, internet, social media, e mail and search engines. Preference was found to be higher for mobile phone (100%) and social media (86.67%) by extension agents. Social media was used mostly by the extension agents for production (83.33%), protection (93.33%) and marketing purposes (36.67%). Correlation between awareness and user preference on age was found to be negatively correlated at one per cent significance for farmers and five per cent significance for extension agents. Awareness and preference of farmers were positively correlated with education, cosmopoliteness, attitude, innovativeness, computer proficiency and accessibility with one per cent significance. Adoption was positively correlated with awareness at one per cent level of significance and preference at five per cent significance. For extension agents awareness and preference were positively correlated with education, attitude and effectiveness at one per cent significance. Accessibility was positively correlated with awareness at one per cent significance and preference at five per cent level of significance. The study revealed that both the farmers and extension agents preferred to use mobile phone and social media as a general digital tool. The use of digital tools by farmers was mainly for marketing purposes whereas extension agents were more inclined towards the crop protection purposes. Lack of contents related to agriculture and lack of training programmes were the major constraints identified. From the findings of this study it can be concluded that there is significant role for digital technologies in the development of agricultural sector in Kerala which is not utilized at the fullest. Proper training programmes for farmers and extension agents with proper content updates and tapping the opportunities of digital tools for marketing can benefit the agricultural sectors in various dimensions.
Entrepreneurial behaviour of farmer producer organization (FPO) members for livelihood security
(Department Of Agricultural Extension, College Of Agriculture, Vellayani, 2020) Asha Elizabeth Jose; Jayalekshmi, G
Entrepreneurial behaviour of rural women in Thiruvananthapuram district
(Department Of Agricultural Extension, College Of Agriculture, Vellayani, 1996) Jayalekshmi, G; Shilaja, S
The present study under the title ''Entrepreneurial behaviour of rural women in Thiruvananthapuram district was undertaken to assess the entrepreneurial behaviour of rural women to study the personal and sociopsychological factors influencing entrepreneurial behaviour and the constraints experienced by the rural women in starting an enterprise. Rural women trained in mushroom cultivation and fruit and vegetable preservation were selected from College of Agriculture, Vellayani and Mitraniketan Vellanad. Thirty rural women each were selected from each centre for each enterprise. Thus 120 trained rural women were selected. Another 60 untrained rural women were also selected as control. Thus the total sample comprised of 180 with five groups of respondents. Data was collected using interview schedule and suitable statistical techniques were employed in the analysis of data. An entrepreneurial development index was developed and found that the factors such as economic motivation, risktaking ability, decision making ability, achievement motivation, management orientation, competition orientation and self confidence were the major dimensions of entrepreneurial behaviour. With regard to the profile of rural women, the rural women selected, both trained and untrained belonged to young age group and majority of them belonged to backward caste. Educational status and family educational status of the selected respondents were high school and above. More than 50 per cent of them have land holding ranging from 15-20 cents and annual income between Rs.15000-20000. More than 55 per cent of the rural women have taken up self employment. Above 50 per cent of the rural women have high information seeking behaviour, mass media contact, social participation, level of aspiration and attitude towards self employment. Majority of the rural women have low cosmopoliteness. Cent per cent of the trained rural women have high knowledge of the technology. Except rural women in group II & V all others have high entrepreneurial behaviour. Comparison of the five groups revealed that they were on par with respect to age, landholding, annual income and social participation. Majority of the trained rural women belonged to backward caste and untrained belonged to scheduled caste. The trained rural women differed significantly with the untrained in their educational status, family educational status, occupation, information seeking behavior and perceived knowledge of the technology. There was significant difference among the groups with respect to mass media contact, level of aspiration, cosmopoliteness and entrepreneurial behavior. Relationship of the personal and socio-psychological factors with the entrepreneurial behavior showed that in the case of group I, variables namely educational status of the family, information seeking behavior, mass media contact, level of aspiration, attitude towards self employment and perceived knowledge of the technology were positively and significantly correlated. In the case of group II, caste educational status of the respondents and family, information seeking behavior, mass media contact, social participation, level of aspiration, cosmopoliteness, attitude towards self employment and perceived knowledge of the technology were positively and significantly correlated with the entrepreneurial behavior. Only educational status of the family was found to have a positive and significant relationship with the entrepreneurial behavior of group III. In the case of group IV, caste, educational status of the respondent and family, annual income, information seeking behavior, mass media contact, cosmopoliteness, level of aspiration, attitude towards self employment and perceived knowledge of the technology were positively and significantly correlated with the entrepreneurial behaviour. In the case of group V a positive and significant relationship exists between entrepreneurial behavior and educational status of the respondent and family, annual income, information seeking behavior, mass media contact, social participation, cosmopoliteness, attitude towards self employment and perceived knowledge of the technology. With regard to the constraints experienced by the rural women, ‘Marketing problem and lack of financial assistance were the constraints in both the enterprises followed by non-availability of spawn in mushroom cultivation and high cost of fruits in fruit and vegetable preservation.
Factors influencing entrepreneurial behaviour of rural women
(Kerala Agricultural University, 1999) Jayalekshmi, G; Shilaja, S; Shobhana, G
Multidimensional analysis of farmers of Integrated farming systems in Kuttanad
(Department of Agricultural Extension, College of Agriculture, Vellayani, 2017) Mamatha G Nair; Jayalekshmi, G
Standardization of hybrid rice seed production for Kerala using three line system of breeding
(Department of Seed Science and Technology, College of Agriculture, Vellayani, 2020) Arunkumar, C; Jayalekshmi, G