Evaluating Constraints in the Adoption of Improved Dairy Practices among Cooperative and Non Cooperative Farmers under URMUL in Bikaner District of Rajasthan, India

The paper is based on the premise that dairy farmers under Uttari Rajasthan Cooperative Milk Union Ltd. (URMUL) in Rajasthan face numerous challenges in the adoption of improved dairy practices. Agriculture and animal husbandry have a symbiotic relationship, in which the agricultural sector provides feed and fodder for the livestock, and animals provide milk, manure and draught power for various agricultural operations. The study was conducted to delineate the constraints faced by dairy farmers in the adoption of improved dairy practices. The Uttari Rajasthan Dugdh Utpadak Sahakari Sangh Limited (URMUL), Bikaner, Rajasthan, India, was the locale of the study. URMUL consists of six milk collection units, namely Bikaner, Lunkaransar, Khajuwala, Chattargarh, Bajju and Dungargarh. All six milk collection units were selected for the study. URMUL consists of 49 functional milk collection routes. One milk route was selected randomly from each milk collection unit which have a maximum number of registered functional dairy cooperative societies. This way, six milk collection routes were selected for the proposed study. Three dairy cooperative societies were randomly selected from each route. Thus, a total of 18 dairy cooperative societies were selected. For the selection of the respondents from the selected 18 cooperative societies, a proportionate random sampling procedure was adopted to select the respondents who have received the benefits of dairy cooperative societies under URMUL, and they are called members of URMUL. To constitute the other half of the sample size, the same number of farmers were also selected randomly from the same milk collection units who had not received the benefits of dairy cooperative societies under URMUL, and they were called non-members. Thus, a total of 300 respondents, i.e., 150 members and 150 non-members, were selected from the selected milk collection units as a sample for the present investigation. A semi-structured interview schedule was designed and used to collect data, and then the data was analysed by employing several statistical measures such as mean per cent score, rank correlation, z-test, etc. The results revealed that the major constraints being faced by the dairy farmers in adoption of improved dairy practices were “Irregular and inadequate supply of cattle feed at local level (59.44 MPS)”, “Feed and fodder requirements of cross breed cow is more than desi (57.33 MPS)”, “Discrepant and discrete testing of fat (55.56 MPS )”, “High cost of veterinary medicines (53.89 MPS )” and “Lack of knowledge about the activities and schemes for members of dairy cooperative society (53.78 MPS). It was concluded that the out of the five constraints, viz. “Infrastructural constraints” was ranked first in terms of the adoption of improved dairy practices among Cooperative and Non-Cooperative Farmers.