Book Description

Farmers in developing countries are frequently exposed to the uncertainties of weather, prices and disease. Thus decision making behaviour plays a crucial role every day, affecting farming operations. The study was carried out in Raichur, Kalaburagi and Koppal districts. From each district, two taluks were selected and from each taluk, two gram panchayats were selected randomly and from each panchayat a village was selected randomly. From each selected village, 15 farmers were randomly selected and the total sample size constituted 180 respondents. The attitude of farmers towards farming in irrigated situation was better than the attitude of farmers in rainfed situation. The overall decision making behaviour was better in irrigated situation compared to rainfed situation. Achievement motivation and decision making behaviour were found to be significantly influencing the annual agricultural income. As the decision making behaviour score increased by one unit, the annual agricultural income increased by 9231.28. Irrigated rainfed dummy, number of years of schooling, achievement motivation, risk orientation and mass media participation were found to be significantly influencing the institutional participation. In irrigated situation, as evident from the experiment, there were 38 per cent of the respondents in the risk averse category. In the case of rainfed situation, it is alarming to note that as high as 52 per cent of the respondents were in the risk averse group on loss of toss. The irrigated farmers were more likely to take up loan in comparison to rainfed farmers. Number of family members had a positive influence on migration while, the decision making behaviour score had a negative influence on migration. There is evidence of framing bias and anchoring bias among the sample respondents. The farmers were willing to pay more for weather information compared to market and plant protection information.