Studies on profiles of sweet orange growers in Maharashtra State Ekhande Y S, Holkar S C, Raykar S S and Suradkar D D1

A sweet orange (Citrus sinensis L.) is grown on an area of 55,000 ha with 6.5 lakh tones of production per year. The area under this fruit crop is increasing rapidly as a result of dynamic employment guarantee scheme launched by the Government of Maharashtra for fruit crops. Sweet Orange is a major fruit crop inMarathwada region of the State. 0.77 lakh hectares area is under this crop and 0.34 lakh hectares is under production producing about 5.18 lakh metric tons (Anonymous, 2014a). The Ex-post-facto research design was used for the present study. The study was conducted in Aurangabad district. Three tahsils namely, Aurangabad, Paithan and Kannad were selected purposively on the basis of the maximum area under sweet orange cultivation. The main objective of this study is to study the profile of sweet orange growers. It was noticed that, majority of farmers 58.34 per cent had medium farming experience. Whereas, 25 per cent of farmers had low farming experience and only 16.66 per cent farmers had high farming experience. As regards to education, only 8.34 per cent of farmers were educated up to post graduate level whereas, 14.16 per cent of farmers educated up to graduate level and 35 per cent of farmers were educated up to higher secondary school level, while 23.33 per cent of farmers had high school level education and 15 per cent farmers had middle school level education. While 1.67 per cent farmers were educated up to primary schooland 2.50 per cent farmers were illiterate. As regards to family size more than half of the sweet orange growers (70.84%) had medium family size whereas, 16.66 per cent of sweet orange growers belonged to small family size. Thus, 12.50 per cent of sweet orange growers belonged to large family size. As regards to occupation, majority of farmers 66.66 per cent were engaged in farming whereas, 25 per cent of farmers engaged in farming with subsidiary enterprises, 8.34 per cent respondents were doing farming along with subsidiary and in addition to other sources of income. It was also observed during study that, 60 per centof the farmers possessed medium land holding and 24.16 per cent farmers possessed small land holding, whereas, 15.84 per cent farmers possessed big land holding. As regards to annual income, 74.16 per cent farmers had medium level of annual income whereas, 12.50 per cent of farmers categorized under lowlevel of annual income and 13.34 per cent of farmers had high level of annual income. It was also found in research that, 15 per cent respondents had low social participation while, 66.66 per cent of the respondents having medium social participation and 18.34 per cent of the respondents were found in high category of social participation. As regards to mass media use, majority 74.16 per cent of the respondents belonged to medium mass media use. Whereas, 12.50 per cent and 13.34 per cent of farmers belonged to low and high mass media use categories, respectively. It was noticed that majority 75 per cent of the respondents had medium economic motivation whereas, 11.66 and 13.34 per cent of respondents belonging to low and high economic motivation categories, respectively. As regards to market orientation, more than half of respondent 65 per cent had medium level of market orientation, whereas, 15.84 per cent of respondent had low market orientation and 19.16 per cent of respondent found high market orientation. The present study was used as a multistage sampling procedure. Collected data were classified, tabulated and analyzed by using statistical methods like frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation.