Study of investment on major crops grown by marginal and small tribal farmers of Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh, India

Madhya Pradesh has largest tribal population in India. Dindori, Mandla, Betul,Chhindwara, Dhar and Jhabua are major tribal districts. Dhar is in close proximity of Indore, an educational hub, an industrial and financial and civilized city of Madhya Pradesh. The conditions of tribals in this district are different than in other tribal districts. A list of total blocks of Dhar district was prepared and on the basis of the total tribal population , first five blocks namely, Badnawar, Dhar, Manawar, Dharampuri and Nalchha have been selected . A list of villages of tribal farmers of each selected blocks were prepared and 5 villages from each block have been selected purposely of the basis of maximum tribal farmers in the village. Accordingly, 25 villages falling in 5 selected blocks were the total sampled area of study. After the selection of villages, separate list of marginal and small farmers who were cultivating soybean, cotton, wheat and gram were prepared with the help of Deputy Director of Agriculture Dhar . Among these lists 5 marginal farmers (0.1 to 1.00 hectare.) and 5 small farmers (1.01 to 2.00 hectare) from each village have been selected randomly. Thus, 125 marginal farmers and 125 small farmers were selected. Total kahrif area comprises 504024hec.; as compared to rabi crops(134716hec.) covering wheat, gram and some other rabi crops. Soybean accounts about 49 % area of kharif crops, followed by cotton 22%. It found in the study that area under soybean was found to be 0.79 hectare per farm followed by cotton 0.82 hectare.