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Type : Other Article

Adoption Behaviour of Commercial Vegetable Growers in District Ghaziabad (UP)

Dhiraj Kumar Singh, B. K. Singh, V. P. S. Yadav and Lotan Singh

Abstract

The cultivation of vegetables, which is done mainly for economic gain or for marketing purpose, is known as Commercial Vegetable Cultivation. India is one of the largest producer of raw materials for the food processing industries in the world (only 2%). The value addition in food sector is as low as 7 percent and will go up to 35 percent. There is need for increasing food processing from 2 percent to 10 percent by 2010 which will be reflected, in the corresponding increase in Gross National Product. Vegetable cultivation has great potentiality and scope for improving socio-economic condition of small and marginal farmers since it provides higher yield and high economic return in short time as compared to food grains. It is an indispensable part of balanced diet and according to Indian Council of Medical Research recommendation; average person should consume nearly 300g of vegetable daily. Growing of vegetables is 4 to 8 times more remunerative than cereals and it also generate employment in the rural areas. Commercial vegetable cultivation is not getting as popular as it should be among growers because of high input costs, lack of irrigation facilities and difficulties in their marketing and storage. It is estimated that by 2010 country’s vegetable demand would be around 135 million tonnes. There is an urgent need to increase the productivity of vegetable in order to provide nutritional security to increasing population of India. Uttar Pradesh is second largest producer state of vegetable. Due to its proximity to National Capital Territory of Delhi, Ghaziabad has a great potential for commercial vegetable cultivation. Hence, the study was carried out in eight blocks of this district. In this study adoption level refers to the level of adoption of recommended cultivation practices of cabbage by the respondents. Fifteen recommended practices included in the package of practices in vegetable cultivation were used for measuring this adoption. The findings of this study highlighted that about 85 percent of the vegetable growers had low or medium adoption of commercial cabbage cultivation practices meaning there by medium adopters were more energetic, knowledgeable, dynamic and having more interest in adopting modern vegetable technologies

Keyword: Commercial vegetable culture

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