Complete PDF - ENVIS Centre on Himalayan Ecology

Himalayan Ecology and Development
as livestock is an inseparable component of hill agriculture (Chander and Mukherjee, 1995).
A few reports on economics of livestock production in Himalayan region are available, but they
need to be analyzed care fully before drawing any conclusions, nevertheless these reports provide some
insight of the situation. Sharma and Singh (1994) have studied the economics of milk production by different
type of animals in parts of Himachal Pradesh and concluded that animals are good source of income to the
hill farmers. However the report of Tripathi (1995) based on economic analysis of milk production by
farmers from different altitude in the hills of Himachal Pradesh, indicates loss in milk production. Report of
Shankya (1993) from Nepal indicates that the livestock contributes about 20% towards the cash income of the
farmer’s family. Livestock contribution to the GDP of Bhutan is reported to be as high as 10% (Rai, 1992).
All the above reports indicate importance of livestock sector in the hill economy. There are no such studies
for Kumaon hills. Therefore a study was conducted as a part of a research project entitled “Systems Approach
to Livestock Production and Health Service Delivery system In Sub-Himalayan Region” by a
multidisciplinary team of scientists during 1997-99 to study overall scenario of animal husbandry in the
Kumaon hills.
MATERIALS AND METHOD
The study was multidimensional, hence, quantitative and qualitative information was obtained
through literature review, available records, questionnaire survey, Interviews, and through participatory rural
appraisal. The diverse view points were analyzed with focused attention on farmers view as no one know
better the local condition, needs and aspirations. Twelve villages of Nainital district from two randomly
selected blocks (Ramgarh & Dhari) were selected randomly. From each selected villages 10 farmers were
selected randomly for questionnaire survey. PRA was applied in 4 of the selected villages to collect the
information.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Demographic Information
General profile of the farmer
Table 1 shows the demographic information of the selected households. About 77.30% of the head
of the households were literate which is higher than the average for Nainital district, which is 67.88% for
male and 65.59% for female according to 1991 population census. The general profile of the households,
main occupation of the heads of the family is shown in Table 2.
Types of land holdings
Type of land holdings of the farmers is being presented in Table 3. Major of the farmers were small
(57.52%) followed by medium and large (29.28% and 13.20% respectively). This conforms the fact that the
size of land holding is very small in the hills and most of them are uneconomic holdings. Almost all the
farmers were doing mixed farming, which is inherent to the hill-farming system.
Animal resource
92.52% of the farmers had cow out of which very few of cross breed (Table 1). They mostly reared
local breed of cow and buffalo. They mostly reared the cow for their male offspring used in ploughing. There
is scarcity of feed and fodder in the hills, it is the wisdom of the farmers that they keep small sized animals,
which served their purpose with in the limited resource. 26% of the farmers had buffalo either singly or in
combination with other livestock. These buffalos and goat are fast replacing the local cow as they give good
amount of milk, cow-dung and ready cash as compared to the local cow as reported by Singh (1993) and
Jodha (1993). The ratio of human to livestock was 1:31:1, which is quite higher. The number of cross breed
cow was very low and it was concentrated in only for the selected villages which were valley and farmers
were able to feed green fodder to them.
Wealth ranking
Wealth ranking a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) was carried out in for of the villages.
According to the people’s perception there were four categories of people viz. very poor, poor, medium and
rich. The basis of classification was different than that of Planning Commission of India. They were based on
ground reality and indicators such as possession of fertile land, type of house (Kuccha, Pucca, big, small etc.)
nature of occupation etc. There were 61.06% (Table 4) very poor. This figure did not match with the figure of
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