Reasons for discontinuation of polyhouse cultivation by farmers in haryana Ghanghas B.S.1, Assistant Scientist 1Department of Extension Education, College of Agriculture, CCSHAU, Hisar-125004, Haryana *Email id: ghanghasbs@gmail.com
Abstract Despite, India being the second largest producer of vegetables in the world its demand of vegetables is rapidly increasing because of burgeoning population along with rising health and nutrition consciousness among people. The factors such as adverse climatic conditions, high potential of vegetables, fruits and flowers, agro inputs availability, small and fragmented land holdings and increased demand of quality vegetables necessitate the adoption of protected cultivation. Despite sincere efforts by government, farmers are discontinuing the practice which is reflected by findings that approximately 75.00 percent of continuing poly house farmers were found vulnerable to discontinuity. Major reasons for discontinuation were socio-economic factors such as inability to maintain the structure due to high maintenance cost of cladding material, dependency on external support schemes for investments, marginal money returns being capital intensive endeavour, and lack of remunerative price policy for vegetables by the government followed by technical factors viz. lack of expertise of field functionaries of public extension system in horticulture, lack of thorough knowledge of horticulture, plant physiology, growing media, plant pathology and entomology as well as the engineering capability of farmers to provide an environment best suited for plant growth and lack of thorough knowledge of greenhouse designs especially gutter height requirement for various crops & environment control systems followed by lack of vegetables processing knowledge & value addition process knowledge and poor quality cladding material among input related factors. Top Keywords Poly house, Discontinuation and multiple cropping. Top |