MSc

The study entitled “Gender analysis of vegetable growers in the homesteads of Kollam district” was conducted in two Agro Ecological Units of Kollam District which involved a total of 120 respondents, during the period, 2016-2017.The study was done to determine the gender roles of vegetable growers in Kollam district, their scale of knowledge, the rate of adoption of vegetable production practices, constraints faced in vegetable production and formulate strategy to mitigate the constraints faced.
In the case of Gender analysis conducted, under the decision-making analysis, major women dominated decisions were child rearing and religious decisions.The decisions regarding the transfer and ownership of ancestral properties, various farm operations and decision related to entertainments were mainly men dominated. Bothmen and women were able to enjoy the benefits of basic facilities like income, education, medical facilities, and transportation facilities. But in the case of political interventions, technological development, and extension agency contact, benefits were utilized more by men than women. The benefits of government policies and incentives, employment opportunities and farmers group were enjoyed more by women. In the agricultural activity analysis, major women oriented activities were post-harvest operations, livestock and poultry activities. Major men oriented agricultural activities were land preparation, collection and arrangements of inputs, fertilizer application and plant protection activities.
In the case of house hold activity analysis, all the house hold activities were women oriented. In the case of influencing factors of development, the positively influencing factors for women were provision of equal medical facilities, freedom to pursue education and take up jobs, inherit properties of their parents and freedom to vote in elections. In the case of men, when most of the factors were positively influencing, factors such as lack of timely availability of incentives, inability to marry outside the community and inability to take up political powers in the society were negatively influencing. Results of analysis of access to resources showed that access to resource was mostly male dominated.
Vegetable growers according to their knowledge about vegetable cultivation practices indicated that the majority of respondents had medium level of knowledge about vegetable cultivation and only few of them (39 per cent) had high knowledge. Only 12 per cent of respondents were in the group of low knowledge level. Majority of the respondents were having high knowledge about the KAU varieties, sowing methods, spacing, pest and diseases attack of the particular crops, and harvesting of the produce.
Correlation analysis of scale of knowledge with independent variables, education and economic motivation were positively and significantly correlated to scale of knowledge at 5 percent level of significance. Whereas the variables, such as experience in vegetable cultivation, extension agency contact, information seeking behaviour, social participation, and training were positively and significantly correlated to scale of knowledge at 1 percent level of significance.
In the case of adoption, 72 per cent of respondents belonged to the category of medium level of adoption. 20 per cent of the respondents were found having high level of adoption and 8 percentage of the respondents belonged to low level of adoption category. Majority of the farmers adopted KAU varieties and they followed almost all the cultural practices like seed treatments, seed rate, land preparation, weeding, and application of manures as per the recommendation of Package of Practices.A partial adoption was noticed in the case of application of NPK fertilizers and similar trend was observed in case of plant protection measures. On distributing the respondents into various adopter categories, only 2 % of them were innovative in nature, which was almost on par with the normal Rogers curve (2.5%), whereas majority of the respondents fell into the category of early majority(33%) followed by late majority (31%). This is an indication of fairly good level of adoption of KAU cultivation practices by homestead vegetable growers.
Independent variables such as occupational status, economic motivation, and family labour utilization were positively and significantly correlated to extent of adoption at 5 percent level of significance. Whereas the variables such as experience in vegetable cultivation, extension agency contact, information seeking behaviour, social participation, and training were significantly correlated to extent of adoption at 1 percent level of significance. A negatively significant correlation was noticed between extent of adoption and experience in vegetable cultivation.
The major constraints faced by the respondents were scarcity of water resources, prevalence of pest and diseases, price fluctuation, high labour charges, high cost of cultivation, labour scarcity, non-availability of quality planting materials and non-assurance of premium price for organic products.
To solve the acute water shortage especially during the summer seasons, rain water harvesting systems in the homesteads should be encouraged. In case of labour shortage, necessary amendments, be made to bring the NREGS workers to the agricultural sector. Integrated pest and disease management approaches can reduce the problems of prevalence of pest and diseases. Homestead farming has to be made more remunerative to attract more farmers, for which measures like popularization of organic vegetable production, timely availability of inputs, fixation of minimum support price for organic produce and proper post harvest management will enable the farmer to commercially utilize the produce in an effective manner and thereby increasing overall output.
From this study, it can be concluded that even though there are some men and women dominated operations in homestead vegetable cultivation, both the gender had a significant participation in most of the activities. There was no single homestead where the agriculture is done by male partner alone which implied that the women had a significant contribution in agricultural activities. Hence, the overall extent of knowledge about vegetable production technology was found to be medium, there is a need of special attention by providing training about vegetable production to the farmers, so that their knowledge could be increased and the adoption of technology would be enhanced. Therefore, more educational efforts are, required to be undertaken by extension agencies by organizing training and demonstrations to enhance the knowledge and adoption level of farmers.