Adoption behaviour of the Tribals in relation to goat keeping

Sourav Chandra, R K Ghosh, Sukanta Biswas, A Goswami

Department of Veterinary and Animal Husbandry Extension Education
West Bengal University of Animal & Fishery Sciences
37, K. B. Sarani, Belgachia, Kolkata-700037, India
arunasisvet@yahoo.co.in

Abstract

The study was conducted with randomly selected goat keepers of two purposively selected blocks (Dhupguri and Rajganj) located in Terai belt of West Bengal, India. Fifty four tribal and fifty four non-tribal goat keepers which constituted the total sample size (N= 108) of the study were selected randomly from these two blocks.

The study revealed that the mean score of Education, Family Educational status, Communication source and adoption of improved practices in goat keeping were significantly high among the Non-tribal farmers than the Tribal farmers. The study also revealed that there is a significant and positive correlation between adoption of improved practices in goat keeping with education, Family educational status and communication source. The present study also identified Communication source and Family educational status as key elements that directly and indirectly promote the adoption of improved practices in goat keeping by the Tribal and Non-tribal goat keepers respectively.

Key words: Adoption, Goat keeping, Non-tribal, Tribal

Introduction

Goats play an important role in generating employment, income, capital, storage and improving household nutrition (Pannin and Mahabile 1997). To enhance the production potential of the goat breeds over the entire world is to introduce superior technologies for mass adoption and to create the necessary facilities vital for adoption of improved practices in goat keeping. Wilkening (1953) described the adoption of a specific practice is not the result of a single decision to act but series of actions and meaningful decisions. This is a tremendous task, which need dedicated and skilled workers to produce the desirable impact of adoption of improved practices in goat keeping. Implementation of any improved scientific technology in practical field depends on the adoption behaviour of the individual who wants to implement. The present study was to compare the level of adoption of improved practices in goat keeping between the Tribal and Non-tribal goat keepers and arrive at definite conclusions regarding the extent of influences of particular independent variable/ variables on the adoption of improved practices in goat keeping.

Materials and Methods

The study was conducted with randomly selected goat keepers of two blocks (Dhupguri and Rajganj) located in Terai belt of West Bengal, India. These two blocks were selected through purposive sampling technique. Fifty four tribal and fifty four non-tribal goat keepers which constituted the total sample size (N= 108) of the study were selected randomly from these two blocks. Seven improved practices viz. scientific goat management, colostrum feeding, deworming, vaccination against diseases, use of drugs during illness, castration by castrator and feeding of concentrates were selected on the basis of recommendation of the Department of Veterinary and Animal Husbandry Extension Education, West Bengal University of Animal and Fishery Sciences. Adoption index was worked out for each goat keeper by using Adoption Index method of Dasgupta (1968). According to him adoption index is referred to as "Years of use of adopted applicable practices" i.e. it not only takes the number of practices adopted by a goat keeper into consideration but also the number of years he/ she has been using each of the adopted practices. The adoption score, according to this index, is derived for each goat keeper by adding the number of years used each of the applicable practices. The figure so obtained is then divided by the number of practices applicable to the farm. For example, if a goat keeper adopted two out of six practices applicable to the farm and has been using one practice for ten years and the other for eight years, then he / she is assigned an adoption score of: (10+8)/ 6 = 3

Here, 'scientific goat management' refers to management of the goat house. Whether the goat keepers have provided standard space, adequate ventilation, proper lighting and sanitation (Banerjee 1998) for their goat house or not were taken into account to measure the 'scientific goat management' component of the adoption index. Those goat keepers who have maintained the standard requirement of space, ventilation, lighting and sanitation in their goat house were assumed as the adopter of 'Scientific goat management' practice. Scoring system followed by Pareek and Trivedi (1964) in their "Socio-economic status scale-rural" was used to quantify the education, Social participation and land holding of the respondents and these are given below-

The method followed by Ray (1967) in computing the Family Educational Status was followed in the present study and the procedure adopted is illustrated below-

Index of Family Educational Status = Total Education Score/Effective family size
= 4/6 = 0.67

Effective family size was quantified by subtracting the members who were below four years of age from the total family members. Communication source was measured using the scale of Bandyopadhay (1986) which is as follows-

Communication sources

• Krishi Vijyan Kendra Personnel:
• Animal Resources Development personnel:
• Block Livestock Development Officer/ Vet. Surgeon:

• Relatives:
• Friends:
• Neighbours:

• Radio:
• Television:
• News Paper:
• Farm Broad caste:
• Exhibition/ Mela:
• Farm Publication:
• Poster:

Monthly income, Flock size and Grazing facility were measured by developing schedules. A pilot study was carried out in two selected blocks before actual data collection. The draft interview schedule for the purpose of data collection was developed by incorporating the tools and techniques of measurements of variables. It was then perfectly modified and data were collected through personal interview technique. In pretesting care was taken not to include persons who are selected as sample for final data collection.

Path analysis was performed to find out the factors that are related to the adoption of improved practices in goat keeping. At the same time 't' test was performed to compare the mean scores of the adoption among tribal and nontribal goat keepers.

Results and discussion

Table-1 presents the adoption of improved practices in goat keeping among the Tribal and Non-tribal goat keepers.

Among the Tribal goat keepers, 81%, 41%, 30%, 13% and 4% adopted castration by castrator, use of medicine during illness, deworming, colostrum feeding and vaccination against diseases respectively. No Tribal goat keepers adopted the scientific goat management and feeding of concentrates. Mahapatra and Nayek (1996) reported more or less same result in their study. On the other hand, castration by castrator, use of medicine during illness, deworming, vaccination against diseases, colostrum feeding and scientific goat management were adopted by 89%, 76%, 54%, 26%, 24% and 4% Non-tribal goat keepers respectively. No Non-tribal goat keepers adopted the feeding of concentrates. Lower adoption rate among the tribal goat keepers than nontribal might be due the fact that the tribal goat keepers were less educated, having lower family educational status and exposure to different communication sources.

The mean values of few selected socio-personal characteristics and adoption behaviour in respect of two categories of goat keepers (Tribal and Non-tribal) have been compared with the help of Independent sample 't' test. The mean scores obtained by the Non-tribal Goat Keepers in respect of characteristics namely Education, Family educational status, Communication source and adoption of improved practices in goat keeping were significantly higher than the Tribal goat keepers. Socio-economic and socio-cultural backwardness of the tribal goat keepers might be the reason for such results.

Table 2 depicts that there was significant differences among tribal and nontribal goat keepers in relation to adoption of Vaccination against diseases and use of medicines during illness.

Correlation coefficients between adoption of improved practices in goat keeping and the independent variables were calculated for both Tribal and Non-tribal goat keepers and the results have been summarized in the Table 3. A perusal of table 3 indicates that in case of both Tribal and Non-tribal goat keepers there were significant and positive relationship between the adoption of improved practices and the variables like Education, Family educational status and Communication source.

Hussain (1968), Tripathi and Garg (1969) and Patel and Singh (1970) reported that education of the respondents was significantly associated with the adoption of the improved animal husbandry practices. Singh and Singh (1970) found the significant relationship between family educational status and improved animal husbandry practices. Bhople and Ekre (1991) reported that mass media exposure of the farmers significantly influence the extent of adoption.

The result of path analysis (Diagram 1) for tribal goat keepers represents the direct and indirect effects of the eight selected exogenous variables on adoption of improved practices in goat keeping. The data reveal that Communication source has the largest direct effect (0.63) on adoption of improved practices in goat keeping followed in descending order by Family educational status (0.51), land holding (0.18), flock size (0.08), monthly income (0.02), grazing facilities (0.0012), education (-0.004) and social participation (-0.25).

The residual effect was 0.45.

Furthermore, education, grazing facility, flock size and monthly income had large indirect effect through communication source. Similarly, social participation, land holding and communication exert large effect through family educational status. Family educational status exerts its highest indirect effect through land holding. Thus it is apparent that communication source not only exerts largest direct effect on adoption of improved practices in goat keeping by the tribal farmers but also it influences indirectly in association with four variables which perform their role through this factor. So, communication source has come out to be a key element which directly and indirectly promote adoption of improved practices in goat keeping by the tribal farmers. This result reveals that exposure to communication sources are very much vital to become aware about any innovation regarding goat farming and their subsequent adoption.

The results of path analysis (Diagram 2)  for Non-tribal goat keepers represents the direct and indirect effects of the eight selected exogenous variables on adoption of improved practices in goat keeping. The data reveal that family educational status (0.48) has the largest direct effect on adoption of improved practices in goat keeping followed in descending order by social participation (0.43), flock size (0.36), communication source (0.34), education (0.09), monthly income (0.06), land holding (0.03) and grazing facility (-0.25).

The residual effect was 0.45.

Further processing of the data revealed that out of eight exogenous variables, there had their largest indirect effect through family educational status which are social participation, grazing facility and communication source. Similarly, two variables viz. flock size and family educational status exert their largest indirect effect through education level of the goat keepers. Monthly income and land holding of the goat keeper exert their largest indirect effect through social participation and flock size respectively. Thus it is apparent that family educational status not only exerts largest direct effect on adoption of improved practices in goat keeping by the non-tribal farmers but also it influences indirectly in association with three variables perform their role through this factor. So, family educational status has come out to be the key element which directly and indirectly promote adoption of improved practices in goat keeping by the non-tribal goat keepers. This result reveals that due to lack of education among the farm family members, they remained traditional instead of adopting improved practices in goat farming.

Conclusion

• Education, Family educational status and exposure to the communication sources are vital for adoption of improved practices in goat keeping. Therefore, it is advisable to increase the level of Education, Family educational status and mass media exposure of the goat keepers in order to achieve a desired production performance.

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