Relationship between personal and socio-economic characteristics of the cashewnut growers and their adoption level

Abstract

India is the largest producer of raw cashew in the world which ranks first in area under cashew (8, 55, 000 ha) with an annual production of 6.20 lakh MT. Nigeria ranks second in area under the cashewnut cultivation, but ranks first in cashewnut production with annual production of 6.36 lakh MT. In the year 2007-2008, India had exported 1,34,340 metrics tonnes of raw cashew valued Rs.11.97crore. The cashew production in Maharashtra is mainly concentrated in Konkan region particularly in Ratnagiri district. In Maharashtra, the area under cashew was 1.65lakh ha. In Ratnagiri, area under cashew was 88,612ha with production of 85,822 tonnes of cashewnuts. The exploratory survey research design was used for the present study. The study was conducted in Ratnagiri district of the Konkan region of Maharashtra state. Three tahsils namely, Khed and Dapoli were selected purposively on the basis of the maximum area under cashewnut cultivation. The main objective of this study is to study the relationship between personal and socio-economic characteristics of the cashewnut growers and their adoption level. It was observed during the study that, The relationship between selected characteristics of the cashew growers and adoption of recommended critical crop management practices for the cashew crop revealed that the characteristics namely age, family size, and number of bearing cashewnut trees were non-significantly related with the adoption level of critical crop management practices for the cashew crop. On the other hand, education, land holding, annual income, age of orchard, production from cashewnut tree, experience in cashew cultivation and market orientation were significantly related with adoption level. The present study was used as a multistage sampling procedure. Collected data were classified, tabulated and analyzed by using statistical methods like frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation and Chi-square.