Survey on farmers preferences and awareness on crop residue management in Jagtial district of Telangana

Abstract

Agricultural crop residues are generated in large quantities and constitute an abundant but under utilized source of renewable biomass in agriculture. The amount of crop residues available in India is estimated to be approximately 500 million tons (Bhuvaneshwari et al., 2019). With a representative survey we examined what practice the farmers of Jagtial Mandal, Jagtial Dist. of Telangana State are following for crop residue management, their view on how to manage crop residue and their awareness about decomposers and composting methods. The results indicated that “burning of crop residues” ranked first among with a Garette’s score of 70.86. But as per the view of the farmer “incorporation of crop residues” ranked first among crop residue management practices followed by farmers with a Garette’s score of 67.25. Survey results also reported that 53 percent of farm respondents were unaware about composting methods and use of decomposers for crop residue decomposition and 47 percentage were aware about decomposers and composting methods.