Farmers Perception about Types and Sources of Agricultural Risk

Abstract

Agriculture is the most important sector of the State economy in Chhattisgarh from the perspective of income and employment generation. The agriculture of the State is characterised by varied agro-climatic situations, availability of resources and market structure. This paper aims to look in to the farmers’ perceptions about type of risks in agriculture and to identify the sources of farms’ risk in the State. A survey of 200 representative farmers in the three agro-climatic zones of the State was carried out. The study utilises descriptive statistical tools with mean and standard deviation to explore farmers’ perception about risks in agriculture and also to find out the severity of risk in all the three agro-climatic zones. The study comes to a conclusion that environment risk is highly perceived by farmers of the Northern Hill and the Bastar Plateau zones, while market risk is perceived in the Chhattisgarh Plain. Among the various sources of investment, socio-economic, environment and market risks, farmers’ perceptions are different in different agro-climatic zones.