ASSESSMENT OF LIVELIHOOD SECURITY OF FARMERS IN COASTAL AREA

Abstract

India is a developing nation where the vast majority of people rely on agriculture as their primary source of income. The means by which people maintain, thrive, and survive is known as their livelihood. A person’s ability to support himself is a result of how and why they organize to use labor, technology, power, knowledge, and social relationships to change their environment and meet their needs. In the state of Gujarat, coastal salinity is and will remain the biggest threat to sustainable crop production. The main causes of improved livelihood security are issues with the salinity of the soil and water. A study was conducted in Porbandar, Junagadh and Gir Somnath district to assess the livelihood security of coastal area farmers and to ascertain the relationship between livelihood security and profile of the coastal area farmers. A sample of 120 respondents were selected from 12 different villages on the basis of 5 km from the coastal belt of three districts by applying multistage purposively random sampling technique. Majority (61.67 per cent) of the farmers had medium level of overall livelihood security index, followed by 20.00 per cent of them had low level of livelihood security index and 18.33 per cent of them were with high level of livelihood security index.There was positive and highly significant relationship between education, size of land holding, occupation, annual income, economic motivation, resource use management behavior and their livelihood security and also had positively and significant relationship between management orientation and credit orientation with their livelihood security.