Attitude of farmers towards major millets production technology in Saurashtra region

Millets are nutritiously dense, drought-tolerant grains primarily grown in India's arid and semi-arid tropics, as other food crops cannot be cultivated in that terrain due to low rainfall and poor soil fertility. They are small-seeded grasses from the Poaceae family. These are a vital source of food and fodder for millions of farmers with limited resources in India and play a crucial part in the country's ecological and economic security. Major millets are a group of cereal crops widely cultivated and consumed as staple foods. A few examples of major millets are sorghum millet, pearl millet, and finger millet. Sorghum and pearl millet are the most important crops in the Saurashtra region. The present research study is related to these two major millets (sorghum and pearl millet). Keeping this in view, present study was undertaken to analyse the attitude of farmers towards major millets production technology and explore the relationship between the profile of farmers and attitude of farmers towards major millets production technology. An ex-post facto research design was used for the present investigation. Three districts of Saurashtra region were selected purposively viz. Junagadh, Porbandar and Jamnagar. Three talukas from each district and two villages from each taluka were selected randomly. Total twelve villages from six talukas and fifteen farmers from each village were selected randomly. Thus, a sample of total 180 farmers was considered for the study. Data were gathered using a pre-tested interview schedule through personal interactions. For analysis, appropriate statistical tools such as frequency, mean, percentage, correlation analysis, standard deviation and arbitrary methods were used. The result of the research study reflected that exactly half (50.00 per cent) of the farmers had moderately favourable attitude, followed by 24.44 per cent of farmers had favourable attitude, 13.34 per cent farmers had unfavorable attitude, 07.78 had highly favourable attitude and remaining 04.44 per cent had highly unfavorable attitude towards major millets production technology. The characteristics of the farmers like education, extension contact, source of information and innovativeness had positive and highly significant association with attitude of farmers. Whereas, farming experience, occupation, annual income, social participation and risk orientation had positively and significantly correlated with attitude of farmers. While, size of land holding and cropping intensity were found non-significant association with attitude of farmers. The age was negative and significantly correlated with attitude of farmers.