Livelihood status of tribal farmers of Dharni taluka of Melghat region

The present study on “Livelihood status of tribal farmers of Dharni taluka of Melghat region” was conducted in the Dharni taluka of Melghat region of Amravati district of Maharashtra state. The exploratory design of social research was used for the study. Total 150 tribal farmers were selected as sample for study by stratified sampling method. The data were collected by conducting personal interview of each tribal farmers with help of structured interview schedule. Careful analysis, tabulation and classification of the data were done. The findings of independent variable show that, it is concluded that, 55.33 per cent of the tribal farmers had belong to middle age group. 63.34 per cent of tribal farmers had completed higher school. The distribution pertaining to land holding indicates that 53.33 per cent of tribal farmers had small type of land holding of 1 to 2 ha. More than one third of tribal farmers (34.67%) had agriculture + Labour type of occupation. In case of farming experience, 66.00 per cent of tribal farmers had more 20 years for farming experience, 66.67 per cent of the respondents had medium family size (4 to 6 members). 48.67 per cent of the tribal farmers had Rs 87000-118000 annual Income. They had low source of information 79.33 per cent. In case of type of soil most of the tribal farmers had shallow and moderately deep type of soil for cultivation. 26.67 per cent had no source of irrigation for cultivation. Almost all the tribal farmers from Dharni talukas followed the cropping pattern i.e. Cotton+Tur, Maize, Rice, Soybean in kharif season. Out that 80.00 per cent of tribal farmers followed wheat and gram cropping pattern in rabi season and 13.33 per cent of the tribal farmers followed maize and summer groundnut as cropping pattern in summer season.76.67 per cent of the tribal farmers had 110 to 160 percent cropping intensity. In case of livestock possession 26.67 per cent of tribal farmers had poultry as a livestock possession. In case of psychological variable, they had low innovativeness and economic motivation it has found to be 73.34 per cent and 54.00 per cent respectively and 90.67 per cent of tribal farmers had low social participation. Among the selected independent variables for study namely age, education, land holding, occupation, farming experience, annual income, soil type, source of irrigation, innovativeness and economic motivation were found to be positively significant with livelihood status of the tribal farmers at 0.05 level of probability and, family size, source of information, cropping Pattern, cropping intensity and livestock possession were found to be positively and highly significant with livelihood status of the tribal farmers at 0.01 level of probability therefore the null hypothesis were rejected for these variables, While the variable social participation did not show any significant association with the livelihood status of the tribal farmers, therefore the null hypothesis was accepted for these variables.