Abstract

A study was conducted to analyse the herd size and credit orientation of dairy farmers in Kerala. The target groups were members of dairy co-operatives, enrolled under Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme of the Government of Kerala. Using stratified multistage random sampling procedure, 350 farmers were selected with representation from small, medium and large categories of farms. Out of the 13,023 dairy households enumerated, small sized farms were predominant with a share of 78.80 per cent, followed by medium (20.40 per cent) and large farms contributed merely 0.70 per cent to the total. The average herd size calculated based on standard animal units were 3.13 0.08, 9.52  0.30 and 36.38  3.65 in small, medium and large farms respectively. The overall herd size observed in the study was 12.08  1.05. It was observed that credit orientation was high among 41.1 per cent, medium among 32.6 per cent and low among 26.3 per cent of total farmers.  As per farm size, in medium and large farms the proportion of farmers with high level of credit orientation was 32.0 and 52.0 per cent respectively. Among small farms, farmers with high credit orientation was only 41.7 per cent.

Keywords : Dairy farming, Herd size, Credit orientation