Pandemic and poultry: A study of poultry farming in Kathua block of union territory of J&K during covid 19 period

Abstract

Background: The Poultry sector in India has grown in the recent years and it was anticipated that in the year 2020 the growth rate would be around 10-12 percent, but the Covid 19 Pandemic has adversely affected this sector. There were many socio economic constraints in the poultry farming in Kathua block. Even before the Covid 19, the poultry sector was facing many problems like towering cost of production, low level of knowledge among poultry farmers, fluctuation in prices of poultry products, insufficient and unhygienic slaughter houses etc. Apart from this the religious and cultural restrictions are some of the local economic and social barriers in the poultry farming sector in the study area. Taking into consideration these socio-economic problems in the poultry sector an attempt has been made to examine the socio economic structure of the poultry farmers and the impact of Covid 19 in this allied sector of livelihood of the people in the study area. 

Methods: Various statistical tools such as Cost Benefit ratio, Rate of return on investment, Profitability index etc have been used to study the impact of Covid 19 on poultry sector in Kathua Block. Measures of Central Tendency such as Percentage, mean have been used to obtain the result of various socio economic parameters. Factor analysis has been done to evaluate the domination of factors using SPSS.

Conclusion: In this study the focus was also on the different variables which are affecting the socio-economic structure of the whole poultry farming community and also to study the impact of Covid 19 Cost Benefit Analysis has been considered for the three different time spans. The result of the CBA revealed that in the month of May-June farmers of the Kathua Block suffered in loss due to heavy restrictions imposed by the government on the movement of the people. In the month of Nov-Dec, 2019 maximum profit was earned by the farmers among all three different time period due to the fact that there was no case of Covid 19 during this time and no lockdown was imposed at this time.