Evaluation of socio-economic status of the skilled and unskilled workers of an organic farm of Himachal Pradesh, India- A case study

Abstract

In this study, an attempt was made to study the socio-economic status of the workers engaged in organic farming. The various healthy practices under organic farming like compost production, use of bio-pesticides, crop rotations, etc. increases soil health and quality of the food. The organic practices including Homa bhasm, Agnihotra and Biodynamic farming besides promoting healthy agriculture are expected to have seeming effects on behavioral aspects of the farm workers. However, apparently systemic information on social attributes of organic farm is still limited. The socio- economic aspects of an organic farm CSKHPKV, Palampur were documented through structured questionnaires. The data was analyzed by the use of indices, ratios and percentages. The various aspects as family structure and size, age distribution, caste structure, literacy level, occupational pattern, economic status behavioral aspects were evaluated. The skilled workers had nuclear family while unskilled workers had joint families, larger portion of workers in the organic farm belonged to younger age group (31 years), literacy index was high (4.32) in case of skilled workers while low (3.23) for unskilled workers. It was observed that in case of skilled workers majority of individuals were positively affected through increased farming knowledge, better wage rate, improved ethical and spiritual thinking while in case of unskilled workers no obvious positive reaction was observed for farming knowledge and wage rate though there was perceptible change in punctuality and spiritual thinking.