Division of Agriculture Extension Education, FoA, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Jammu
The study was conducted in Jammu, Doda and Samba districts of Jammu & Kashmir. Multi stage sampling plan was followed for the selection of ultimate respondents. Stage-I. Selection of districts:- Three districts namely Jammu, Samba and Doda was selected purposively because of having maximum number of FMB's (11) existing in these three selected districts. Stage-II. Selection of villages:- All FMB adopted villages from three selected districts were selected for the study. Stage-III. Selection of respondents:- The respondents were further divided into two groups. 1) Treatment group:-There are 11 numbers of FMBs existing in selected three districts and each FMB comprises of 8-10 number of farmers. Total 98 FMB's adopted farmers are existing in these 11 FMBs. Therefore, all the 98 FMB adopted farmers from three selected districts were selected for the study. 2) Control group:- From each FMB adopted village, four non FMB adopted farmers were selected randomly, thereby making a sample size of 44 non FMB adopted farmers. Thereby making a grand sample of 142 respondent including both FMB and Non-FMB respondents were interviewed for assessing the impact of Farm Machinery Banks. Results showed that Agriculture was the main source of livelihood of respondents. FMB had significant impact on area and productivity of major field crops falling in its area of operation. Significant improvement was found between before and after the adoption of FMB with respect to increase in cropping intensity. FMB contributed to the tune of 27.28 per cent in overall average household annual income of the FMB members.
Farm machinery banks, Impact, Livelihood, Productivity and cropping intensity
