DEVELOPMENT OF A KNOWLEDGE TEST TO EVALUATE FARMERS’ UNDERSTANDING OF CLIMATE-RESILIENT DAIRY FARMING PRACTICES

India has held the title of ‘largest producer of milk in the world’ for decades. Adoption of climate-resilient dairy practices is of utmost importance in the present scenario of climate variability. The awareness and understanding of the farmers affect the adoption of mitigation practices to combat with impact of climate change. Hence, this study aims to assess the awareness of dairy farmers in selected four districts (stratified random sampling) of Madhya Pradesh, India towards climate-resilient dairy farming practices (n=160) and accordingly develop a knowledge test (n=60) on a five-point continuum. Study data revealed that a major proportion of dairy farmers come under a medium level of awareness score (14.15-19.60) i.e. 55 percent. The study’s additional findings showed that, out of the thirty seven items screened for knowledge of climate-resilient dairy practices, twenty two were ultimately chosen based on their difficulty levels, discrimination index, and point bi-serial correlation. The ‘Guttman split-half coefficient’ validated the final knowledge test on climate-resilient dairy production operations. Numerous researchers observed that insufficient access to information regarding climate change was a major contributing factor to the poor comprehension of the changing climate. This can be used by researchers to gauge farmers’ familiarity with ‘Climate-Resilient Dairy Farming Practices’.