Vol. 11, Special Issue 2 (2022)

Author(s):
Shrabantika Ghosh, Ushia Rai, Subhajit Chakraborty, Trishita Banik, Subhrajyoti Panda and Sabita Mondal

Abstract:
The study was conducted during 2020-21 in Cooch Behar and Alipurduar district of North Bengal to understand the information seeking behaviour of organic vegetable growers regarding organic vegetable cultivation and to find out the level of adoption among them. Vegetable is one such commodity which is being consumed by every single person. It is even consumed as raw and under cooked many a times hence, awareness and adoption of organic cultivation of vegetable is very important. However, very few studies have focused on the information seeking behaviour and adoption level in the field of organic vegetable cultivation. A multi-stage, purposive-cum-simple random sampling design was used to select 200 respondents. Data was collected with structured research interview schedule and than analysed with statistical tools like frequency, mean, percentage etc. It has been found that vegetable growers are seeking as well as following information more from progressive farmers, friends, relatives, neighbour etc. instead of professionals from different institutes. However, they prefer ADA office regarding seeking information. It was also found that among various mass media they prefer workshop, television, newspaper and internet searching more and thus ranked those as 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively.79 percent of the respondents had adopted and cultivating vegetables organically for more than 3 years by now.Among various organic farming practices, use of organic manure and crop residues was found to be more prevalent in the study area. The study recommends organisation of more such workshops by different government and other organisation to bring the farmers together so that they learn by sharing their experiences among themselves as well as get upto date information which would improve their relation with different professionals like scientist of colleges, universities and KVK. It is also recommended that more workshops to be conducted on pest management as well as use of vermi compost for the vegetable growers of the study area.