NEXUS BETWEEN SOCIO-CONTEXTUAL FACTORS AND CRISIS AWARENESS OF SUGARCANE GROWERS

A study has been conducted in 2022-23 to analyse the level of awareness among the sugarcane growers regarding the crisis in sugarcane cultivation and its association with various socio contextual factors. The Mandya and Mysore districts of Karnataka were purposively selected for the study with total sample size of 120 sugarcane growers. Data was collected through farm and home visits using structured interview schedule. Statistical tools like frequency, percentage, range, mean, SD, correlation and stepwise regression were used to analyse the data. The study revealed that 48.33 per cent, 35.83 per cent, 44.17 per cent, 43.33 per cent and 40.83 per cent of respondents possess moderate level of awareness regarding production crisis, price crisis, flood crisis and input crisis respectively. Majority (67.50 %) of the respondents have low awareness regarding drought crisis. The study concludes that 40.83 per cent, 31.67 per cent and 27.50 per cent of respondents were found to possess overall moderate, low and high level of crisis awareness respectively. The socio contextual factors like age, farming experience, annual income, cosmopoliteness and scientific orientation have shown positive and significant association with overall crisis awareness among the sugarcane growers at one per cent level of significance. Whereas, information seeking behaviour, innovativeness and attitude towards crisis are found to be positively and significantly associated with overall crisis awareness among the sugarcane growers at five per cent level of significance. The scientific orientation, age, annual income and farming experience together found to have explained 39.80 per cent variance in overall crisis awareness.