Attitude and Involvement of Rural Youth in Farming as a Livelihood a Study in North Karnataka

Abstract

The ex-post facto research design was employed to collect data from 144 rural newlineyouth randomly selected from Davangere and Haveri districts of Karnataka during newline2019-20. The scale was developed to measure the attitude of rural youth towards newlinefarming as a livelihood by the following the Likert (1932) procedure of method of newlinesummated rating scale. The results revealed that a high per cent of rural youth involved newlinein farming exhibited highly favourable attitude in the dimensions of human capital newline(36.46%), social capital (50.00%), natural capital (44.79%), and financial capital newline(39.58%) as compared rural youth not involved in farming ( 22.92%, 27.09%, 20.83%, newlineand 16.67% respectively). Majority of youth involved in farming (58.33%) had highly newlinefavourable attitude as compared to youth not involved in farming (29.17%). All the newlineselected 16 independent variables together contributed 71.00 per cent variation in the newlineexpression of attitude towards farming. Involvement of rural youth in agriculture newlinehighlight that more per cent of high level involvement was observed in cultivation of newlinefloriculture crops (58.06%), and field crops (49.15%). All the selected 16 independent newlinevariables together contributed to high per cent of variation in the involvement of newlinefloriculture crops cultivation (79.30%), followed by cultivation of field crops (75.80%), newlinesericulture practices (64.50%), livestock farming (62.10%), and overall farm newlinemanagement practices (59.80 %). newline For retaining rural youth in farming the majority of rural youth expressed newlinestrengthening basic infrastructural facilities (rank I), announcement of remunerative newlinesupport prices and timely purchase by Government (rank II), facilities and support for newlinefarm mechanisation (rank III), provision of benefits of development programmes to all newlinecategories (rank IV), and timely availability of farm inputs (rank VI) newline