Attitude of the Farmers towards Integrated Pest Management Technology Programme on Cotton

Cotton is one of the important commercial crops and the principal raw material for Indian textile industry. Although, there has been significant growth in production, productivity and quality of cotton during the last fifty years, it is still below the world average. In spite of having 28 per cent of the world acreage under cotton, India accounts for only 14-15 per cent of the global cotton production, while our productivity per hectare is lowering around 250-260 kg lint/ha for the last few years with marginal ups and down. Cotton is a crop that provide substratum to about 1326 species of insects from sowing to maturity in different cotton growing areas around the globe. Of these, 8 per cent (162 species) are considered as pests responsible for enormous loss to cotton yield. The above numbers of pests results in failure of cotton crop and it is feared that cotton production might fall down further in the subsequent years if effective steps are not taken to mitigate pest menace in cotton. . In order to minimize the indiscriminate and judicious use of chemical pesticides, integrated pest management (IPM) has been enshrined as cardinal principle of plant protection. In these aspects, the behaviour of the farmers toward the technology is very crucial. Since, extension educational efforts aim at helping the farmers to produce desirable changes in their attitude and adoption behaviour, it is imperative for an extension worker to have knowledge of characteristics and attitude of his audience towards integrated pest management technology on cotton. It is hoped that the attitude scale developed for the study would be useful to other researchers to plan similar studies. Moreover, the results pertaining to attitude of the cotton growers may help the extension workers to plan appropriate strategy for effective transfer of IPM technology. According to the study, it was observed that majority of the cotton growers (62.00 %) belonged to the middle age group i.e. Between 30 to 46 years followed by young (24.00 %) age group. Most (38.00 %) of the respondents were found literate having formal education level upto higher secondary and diploma. As regarding holding, majority (60.00 %) of the respondents had medium size of land holding, 27.00 per cent had small holding, followed by 13.00 per cent had large size of land holding between 2.01 to 4.00 ha. The majority (78.00 %) of the cotton growers having medium farming experience i.e. 10 to 17 years. The maximum cotton growers (52.00 %) were found in medium social participation category (Score between 5 to 8) followed by 32.00 per cent in low social participation category. As far as annual income is concerned, it was found that 64.00 per cent of the respondents fell in medium annual income group (Rs.55,001 to Rs. 92,500) while, 22.00 per cent respondents had high annual income level. The majority (56.00 %) of the cotton growers had fragmented of land holding to 'medium' extent i.e. at 2-3 places. Regarding risk orientation, it was revealed that maximum proportion (57.00 %) of the respondents had preferred to take risk to the 'medium' extent. It was found that majority of the cotton growers (56.00 %) had developed 'favourable' attitude towards integrated pest management technology programme on cotton. While, only 15.00 per cent of them had 'less favourable' attitude towards integrated pest management technology programme on cotton. However, 29.00 per cent of the respondents had developed 'most favourable' attitude towards integrated pest management technology programme on cotton.