Cropping intensity as influenced by resource base of farmers in Sujala III watershedin Northern Dry Zone of Karnataka

Abstract

The challenge before Indian farming is to transform rainfed agriculture into more sustainable and productivesystems through participatory watershed development. The World Bank funded Sujala III watershed project was implementedin Gadag, Koppal and Vijayapur districts. An attempt was made to analyze the influence of resource base on croppingintensity among farmers of Sujala III watershed in Northern Dry Zone of Karnataka. A sample of 60 farmers from each ofupper, middle and lower reach from two sub watersheds were selected making up total of 180 farmers. The findings of theinvestigation shown that, nearly half (47.22 %) of the farmers had medium resource base, 27.78 per cent of the farmers hadlow and 25.00 per cent of them had high resource base. In view of cropping intensity, 45.56 per cent of Sujala III watershedfarmers were found to have low cropping intensity followed by high with 38.33 per cent farmers and medium (16.11 %)cropping intensity.It was observed that, lower reach farmers had got higher (155.02 %) cropping intensity followed bymiddle (144.48 %) and upper reach (124.29 %). Further the study observed that, 45.88 per cent of farmers with mediumresource base were found in high cropping intensity category followed by farmers with high resource base (37.78 %) andlow resource base (26.00 %). However, lower cropping intensity was accounted for forty six per cent of low resource basefarmers, 45.88 and 44.44 per cent of medium and high resource base farmers respectively. The chi square value of 34.78 wasfound significant at one per cent level of significance which indicates that, there was positive and significant associationbetween resource base and cropping intensity. With increase in resource base, cropping intensity had also increased