Enhancing the productivity of paddy through frontline demonstrations for SC farmers of Chamarajanagara District, Karnataka

Among Cereals, Paddy is an important cereal crop grown over an area of 18806 ha under Kabini command area with a productivity of 47.80 q/ha and with a yield gap of 37.20 q/ha. As per the Population Census 2011 data The Schedule Caste (SC) constitutes about 25.4% (2, 59, 445) of total population of the district and the literacy rate of SC men and women is very low and unaware of new agricultural practices. As a consequence, ICAR-Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Chamarajanagar district conducted 100 frontline demonstrations on paddy covering an area of 84 ha of farmers’ fields in villages’ viz., Y K Mole, Irasavadi, Honnuru and Kesturu during the year 2021 and 2022 with a financial support from IIRR Hyderabad under SCSP project to uplift the livelihood security of paddy growing SC people. To enhance the knowledge level of farmers training programmes and demonstrations and media coverage were done to reflect the maximum impact. Totally 19 practices were selected as a criteria to evaluate the farmers to the extent of knowledge gained and adoption of rice production technologies as a result of training programmes conducted. The study revealed that the knowledge gained and adoption of production technologies of rice by farmers ranged from 35.2% to 100% and 26.7 to 100% respectively. The study revealed that the demonstration plots recorded significantly higher mean yield of 61.31 q/ha (30.11% higher) than farmers’ practice (47.14 q/ha).The enhancement in yield was mainly attributed to better yield and growth parameters. Further, per day productivity was also higher with demonstration plot (49.1 kg/ha/day) as compared farmers practice (34.9 kg/ha/day). Higher Benefit: Cost ratio of 1.85 was recorded with integrated crop management practices as compared to farmers’ practices (1.08). These results indicate that there is a great opportunity for schedule cast farmers of Chamarajanagar district, Karnataka for increasing productivity and profitability of the rice crop by adoption of Integrated Crop Technologies (ICT).