Identification of Agricultural Problems of Village Using Participatory Rural Appraisal Technique

The present study on identification of agricultural problems of village using participatory rural appraisal technique was undertaken as Research Review Committee Project for the year 2012-2013 in the village Donwada of Akola taluka of Akola district of Maharashtra State. The required data collected from the village using PRA technique namely preferential ranking technique' and contacting personally with 30 participants. Findings revealed that total twenty two problems of Donwada village were identified by using preferential ranking technique of PRA tool. To find out the importance of problems perceived by the farmers and key informants, rank based quotient (RBQ) was used. The rank based quotient (RBQ) was calculated for each problem and it ranged from 98.78 to 53.03. The highest RBQ value correspond to the problem namely non-availability of labour in the village (98.78) followed by heavy damage/losses due to wild animals (97.27) and less adoption of soil reclamation techniques (96.36). Further, from the study it is observed that the maximum village magnitude value (7969935.6) was attributed to less adoption of soil reclamation techniques and ranked top most problems of the farmers of Donwada village followed by non-availability labour in the village. Moreover, the problems like heavy damage/losses due to wild animals, less adoption of soil and water conservation techniques, lack of knowledge about plant protection measures, non-availability of organic manure and poor linkages with Agril. University Scientists were found to be contributory factors for low productivity of crops. On the basis of problems identified, some training programmes need to be organized by Dr. PDKV, Akola/extension agency/NGO for the farmers of Donwada village on different topics such as awareness about soil and water conservation techniques, soil reclamation techniques for saline sodic soil, INM in cotton, IPM in cotton, process products of soybean, plantation of live fencing crops/plants etc.