Socio-economic characteristics of chickpea growers in Marathwada region of Maharashtra

Abstract

Pulses are the important sources of proteins, vitamins and minerals and are popularly known as "Poor man's meat" and "rich man's vegetable", contribute significantly to the nutritional security of the country. Chickpea is the second most important grain legume in the world after dry bean. Chickpea is most important pulse crop of India in terms of area and production, widely grown for centuries and accounts for nearly 40 percent of the total pulse production in the country. Socio economic characters were calculated by using descriptive statistics mean, SD and CV, it was observed that the middle age farmers (>40 to ≤55) was 40.00 per cent, the young (>25 to ≤40) which was 12.50 per cent and old group farmers (>55 to ≤70) was 47 per cent. With respect to educational level secondary level was dominating with 39.17 per cent. About 52.50 per cent of growers belonged to medium family size. In respect of occupational level of chickpea growers, most of farmers belonged to agriculture that was 97.50 per cent followed by services 1.67 and business very negligible having 0.83 per cent.