Socio-economic Profile of Potato Growers of Jammu Division

Simple size of 225 potato growers was selected randomly from sub-tropical zone of the Jammu, Kathua and Samba districts of Jammu and Kashmir State. The potato growing is an income generating venture and in order to earn livelihood farmers have adopted business of potato that majority (57%) of the respondents was in age group of (40–52 years). It was found that 29.33 per cent of the respondents were educated up to middle school. As far as family system is concerned that joint family system is not losing its importance in rural setting and might have helped the potato growers to utilize their own family members in cultivation of potato crop that 60 per cent of the respondents belonged to joint families and 68 per cent of the respondents had five to eight family members. About 36.89 per cent of respondents had annual net income of Rs 50,000 in Rabi season from potato crop. Social institutions like co-operatives, Self Help Groups (SHG), Farmer Interest groups, Farmers clubs and nongovernment organizations etc, are not popular among the farmers due to their non existence which resulted in their low social participation about (88.44%) had no participation in any social organization. The use of more number of information sources increased the adoption revealed that 70.22 per cent respondents had medium level of mass media exposure. None of the respondents had received any training in potato cultivation from any institutes.