Vol. 11, Special Issue 10 (2022)

Author(s):
Siddhartha Savale, R Senthilkumar, Udaykumar, Subin K Mohan, Dhanraj Girimal and Gurunath Pasare

Abstract:
Kudumbashree, a forerunner of women empowerment in Kerala, is empowering women through numerous microenterprises. Several microenterprises were bought up by Kudumbashree units and one such livestock activity is Ksheerasagaram, a dairy farming project. A study was carried out to examine the knowledge and attitude of Ksheerasagaram beneficiaries about dairy farming in Wayanad district. By adopting multi stage sampling technique 25 beneficiaries were selected arbitrarily from each taluk i.e. Vythiri, Mananthavady and Sulthan Bathery. The total sample size was 75 and data was collected using the personal interview. Attitude scale and knowledge test developed by Goswami (1987) was used to measure the beneficiaries’ attitude and knowledge about dairy farming. The study revealed that majority of the Ksheerasagaram beneficiaries studied were of middle age, belonging to Hindu religion and unreserved communities. It could also be observed that majority of them were living as nuclear families and size of the family was three to four members. Primary occupation was animal husbandry with above ten years of experience. Land owned by majority of beneficiaries was below one acre with small herd size. The study explored the attitude of beneficiaries towards animal husbandry and it revealed that the beneficiaries had neither extreme unfavourable nor too much favourable attitude towards dairy farming. Exploration on knowledge level also indicated that the beneficiaries were distributed almost evenly among categories of knowledge possession from very low to very high.