An Empirical Study : Farmers Perception Towards Contract Farming

This study carried out with an objective to find out the farmer's perception towards contract farming by framing a structured questionnaire extracted and validated by interviewing farmers, Agriculturalist, and Academicians to check the content validity and also 30 farmers were involved in the pilot study for construct refinement. The sampling method is non probability purposive sampling. The sample is chosen from Tanjavur district which is called the rice bowl of Tamilnadu with the sample size of 127 respondents. The mode of Response collection was self-administered questionnaire. Based on the primary data collected by the researcher, the following statistical tools were used for the purpose of analysis and interpretation - Simple percent analysis, Chi-square test, ANOVA, Multiple regression analysis and Factor analysis. By this study, only 18% of farmers are willing to give land for contract farming. It is observed from the study there is significance difference between demographic variables like gender, annual income, area of land, education qualification, experience vs. willingness to give land for contract farming, long term lease, crop insurance and abide company rules & regulations. The multiple regression analysis reveals protected environment, remuneration based on fixed leased amount and contract bonds availing for crop loans were the dominant variables that predict the overall encouragement and welcoming of contract farming practices. Hence, it is concluded that seven factors namely remuneration, corporate and govt support, autonomy abiding corporate requirements, concern about environment, long term crops and allowing pesticides usage and short term crops are the responsible variables for affecting the choice of farmers towards contract farming practices using factor analysis