Farmer’s Knowledge Level towards Temperature, Storage and Packaging of Horticultural Produce

Abstract

India is one of the world’s largest producers of fruits and vegetables, but one-third of its produce rots because of poor storage technologies and infrastructure, packaging, transport and distribution system. Food is wasted throughout the supply chain, from initial agricultural production to final household consumption. Therefore, value-addition may raise the value of products or something can add that enables to increase the profit margin and demand for consumption. The present study was conducted in Haryana state and two districts Hisar from Southwest and Sonipat from Northeast were selected, purposively. From each district, three blocks were selected randomly because not all the farmer have experience of post-harvest management practices in fuits and vegetables crops. Further, three villages were selected from each block making a total of 18 villages. From each village, ten farmers were selected randomly, making a total sample of 180 farmers. Hence, one hundred eighty farmers were interviewed for the study. The study found that majority of the farmers (62.78 per cent) had partial level (26.11 per cent) had high and 11.11 per cent had no knowledge regarding ‘Room cooling: placing the crops in cold storage’. The results also shows that majority of the farmer (65.56 per cent) had high level 32.78 per cent had partial and 1.66 per cent had no knowledge regarding ‘Cleaning: chemical must be removed from produce before packing. e.g. Insecticides, pesticides etc’. It was found that majority of the farmers (66.11 per cent) had high level, 33.89 per cent had partial level of knowledge regarding ‘Flexible sacks: Made of plastic jute, such as bags (small sacks and nets made of open mesh)’, and none was found to have no knowledge of it. To reach the results aggregates total was calculated for each statement separately and on the basis of calculated scores, mean scores and mean score percentage were obtained which were ranked according to their maximum to minimum mean score percentage for assessing the knowledge level of the farmers.