Asian Journal of Agricultural Extension, Economics & Sociology

Vegetables are more valuable due to the presence of important mineral, vitamins, carbohydrates, iron protein and other important body nutrients in these. Vegetables play an important role in our daily diet. Vegetables promote our body growth and development and also protect our body from various disease and deficiencies. We all know about the importance of vegetable but knowledge levels of the farmers about vegetable production are still very low. During the surveying of literature on the knowledge level of the farmers about recommended cultural practices for vegetable production studied that majority of farmers had a medium level of knowledge followed by the low level of knowledge. Only a few farmers had a high level of knowledge about recommended cultural practices for vegetable production.

The study analyzed the resource use efficiency in small scale broiler production in Owerri Municipal Council of Imo State. Data were collected with well structured questionnaire from 40 randomly selected broiler farmers. The questionnaire were analyzed with the appropriate statistical and econometric tools. The result showed that the small scale broiler producers were profitable in the study area. Feed cost was very high consisting of 39.37% of the total cost and 44.63% of the variable cost of production. Farm size, labour, feed cost, medication are all important factors affecting the net revenue of the farmers in the study area. The net revenue of the broiler farmers was estimated at N140,989.56 per farmer per year implying that small scale broiler production is profitable. The farmers were inefficient in the use of resources such as land, labour, capital, feed, medication and other inputs. The benefit cost ratio was estimated at 2.22, implying that for every one naira invested in small scale broiler production in the study area, 11 kobo was gained thus profitable. The major constraints to small scale broiler production are lack of credit and the incidence of pest and diseases. Agricultural policies and programmes should focus on improving the farmers’ access to credit and appropriate technology the farmers’ access to credit and appropriate technology should be developed to reduce losses through the incidence of pest and diseases.

‘Return Migration’ is defined as the “voluntary movement of migrants back to their place of origin”. It is the logical consequences of the successful achievement of all migration-related goals and targets.  Return migration has been becoming a very common phenomenon in rural areas; and it may be due to factors like insecurity feeling in urban areas and lack of freedom in working place, opportunities created under schemes like MGNAREGA in rural areas and other family-related issues. When youths returned to their place of origin (Rural areas) they may not have much alternative to taking up as an occupation other than agriculture and allied activities for their livelihood, in this process the return migrated rural youths had faced and/or perceived many constraints in agripreneurship development. In present study 180 return migrated rural youths of southern India were purposively selected, constraints were operationalized as all the factors, such as social, psychological, economic, technical, marketing and infrastructural which obstruct the youths to take up agriprenuership. For measuring constraints, “Garrett’s Ranking Technique” was used. The salient findings were low social recognition in the agriculture business (62.21), Lack of technical guidance in scientific cultivation (61.50), Lack of proper market intelligence (65.79) and Lack of awareness of different funding schemes and their procedures (59.91), etc. were the major constraints perceived by the return migrated rural youths in the study area. Hence promotion and recognition of rural youths in agriculture and allied activities would apparently motivate the youths more dynamically, in agripreneurship development. 

Aim: The present study was designed to study the impact of off-seasonal migration of hilly tribes in Tirvannamalai district of Tamilnadu. 

Study design: Ex-post facto research design.

Place and Duration of the study: Tiruvannamalai district was purposively selected for this study since it is one among the districts where hilly tribes’ population is high.  This study was confined with seven villages namely Kovilur, Nammiyampattu, Kanamali, Veerappanur, Melsilambai, Palamarathur and Kuttakarai of Jamunamarathur (Jawadhu hills) block during April 2017 to November 2017.

Methodology: The sample size entailed of 240 respondents selected from these villages with proportionate random sampling method.  The respondents were interviewed personally by a well-structured and pre-tested interview schedule.  The collected data were analysed with percentage analysis statistical method.  The findings on the results were interpreted with relevant conclusion. 

Results: In this context, the impact of off-seasonal migration of hilly tribes in Tiruvannamalai district were thoroughly analysed and discussed with nine sub-headings.  The overall impact of migration revealed that majority of the migrant hilly tribes had no changes in agriculture (91.25%), healthcare and sanitation (95.00%), urban contact (91.25%), savings and investment (88.64%), standard of living (66.00%), social status (64.08%), consumption pattern (52.17%) and purchasing power (52.17%).  Increased change observed with the employment status (80.20%) of the migrant hilly tribes. 

Conclusion: Since, the income obtained from the off-seasonal migration activities, but it is mostly spent on debt borrowed by the hilly tribes for the seasonal activities and further improvement can’t be obtained and hence necessary credit facilities have been provided for the migrant hilly tribes.

The study analysed the efficiency of microfinance banks’ lending to agriculture in Imo state, Nigeria. It analysed the cost of loan recovery in relation to the total loan recovered. Purposive sampling technique was used in the study. A list of microfinance banks was collected from the Owerri office of central bank of Nigeria which had 43 microfinance banks in the state. This formed the sampling frame from which 26 microfinance banks were purposively selected. The purposive selection was based on the microfinance banks that had the highest number of agricultural loan beneficiaries. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and efficiency of loan recovery model. The result revealed that the efficiency index of the microfinance banks ranged from 0 to 0.5 and a loan and a mean of 0.06. The result further showed that 96.1% of the banks were within the index of 0 and 0.2. This implies that for every one thousand naira recovered from beneficiaries of microfinance banks, they spent sixty naira from their interest in recovering the loan. The results further revealed that 61.54% of the banks use additional guarantors to recover their loans while unconventional methods of recovery such as the use of the police accounted for 38.46% of the recovery technique. It was therefore recommended and concluded that since these microfinance banks are efficient in their loan recovery, they should make micro loans available to potential borrowers who want to invest in agriculture.