Socio-Economic Factors and their Influence on the Production Performance of Commercial Pig Farms in India

Socio-personal and socio-economic characteristics influence the accessibility to the resources, participation in decision making, livelihood pattern, standard of living etc. Most of the studies conducted hitherto in the social perspective on pig farming primarily focused on the traditional backyard pig rearing system. Very little was known about the social aspects of pig farmers engaged in commercial pig farming, due to relative newness and geographical scatteredness of this enterprise. Thus, the present study was designed to study the socio-personal and socio-economic characteristics of commercial pig farmers and their influence on production performance of pig farms in India. The cases of 100 commercial pig farmers across five states in India were interviewed using structured interview schedule. The study revealed that most of the pig farmers belonged to middle age group (67%) and were literates (83.00 %). The major religion followed among respondents was Hinduism (73%) and majority of them belonged to other backward classes (38 %). Majority had small land holding (36.00%) and small herd size (42 %). The annual income of most of the respondents (47 %) was found to be Rs.4-8 lakh. Production performance score was given to each farm based on some important production parameters (body weight of boar and gilts at first breeding, body weight of fatteners during marketing, body weight of boar and gilt at 6 months and average litter size at birth). Correlation between the production performance and some important socio-personal parameters was found positive and significant.