Vol. 11, Special Issue 7 (2022)

Author(s):
Pratiksha Tripathi and Hulas Pathak

Abstract:
In this paper, we examined the extent of challenges faces by sampled farmers in Raipur district of Chhattisgarh during COVID-19 pandemic. We used garret ranking to identify major challenges faced by farmers. The result indicates that 70% sampled farmers identified labour as the key issue faced during last harvesting whereas, 66% and 56% have faced difficulties due to COVID-19 related restrictions and transportation issues respectively. Almost 59.45% have stressed about Availability of fair price for produce at local level for next season and 54.08% have confirmed financial stress however, 49.29% and 48.14% have acknowledged unavailability of sufficient farm labours and high price of agricultural input as upcoming challenges. We found about 50% respondents sometimes faced shortage of food items they bought. Almost 61.7% households received government support during COVID-19 crisis and 38.3% of the households did not received any support or assistance from government. We found in the survey that none of the households received any kind of support or assistance from NGO’S. We used the FIES as instrument and the result indicates that only 24.33% of the households are food secure, with 75.67% were either moderately food insecure or severely food insecure.