Description of dependent and explanatory variables used in the analysis and the expected signs.
Abstract
The study has shown the importance of identifying factors that determined the likelihood of using veterinary services in Punjab. Secondary data were used for analysis with the sample size of 1137 dairy households. Estimates of factors influencing the use of veterinary services are reasonably consistent with the farmer decision to use it. The proportional relationship between veterinary services available within the village and use of veterinary services revealed that, distance of veterinary service availability positively influenced the farmer decision to use the veterinary services. There was a positive relationship between herd size and use of veterinary services. More educated farmers are in a better position to use the veterinary services. The principal source of income from agricultural activities was positively influenced by the likelihood to use veterinary services in study area. The model from empirical point of view is very important to predict whether household will be using the veterinary services or not after incorporating the value of the explanatory variables.
Keywords
- socio-economic
- institutions
- veterinary services
- commercialization
- logit
1. Introduction
The livestock sector in Punjab contributes 33.38% to agricultural gross domestic product (GDP), and 7.91% to state GDP [1]. This indicates that livestock sector is one of the important sectors in the state economy. As per Pingali and Rosegrant [2] “
Veterinary services are one of the important inputs for dairy farming. Dairy farmers face different socioeconomic circumstances in their own setting, which are likely to cause differences in the attitudes towards the available alternatives [3]. Other than socio-economic factor in the dairy farming, institutional arrangement play pivotal role for service delivery system. The main reason for carrying out this study was to understand the socio-economic and institutional factors, which influence the decision for use of veterinary service. The objective of the study was, therefore, to assess important factors that determined the use of veterinary services by dairy farmers in Punjab.
2. Materials and methods
2.1 Source of data
The study is based on the secondary data, available from National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) on “
This particular survey focused on the rural area by keeping rural farm households as the unit of observations. The sampling design used in the NSS data was stratified multi-stage random sampling with districts as strata, villages as first stage units and farm households as the second stage units. Based on stratified multi-stage sampling design, the survey covered 51,771 sample households at all India level, out of which 1137 sample comprised Punjab’s households belonging to dairy farming who reared at least one milch dairy animal.
2.2 Modeling
Both descriptive statistics and econometric methods were employed for the data analysis. In this study, a
Taking logarithm on both sides,
Where,
The binary logistic regression has widely been used to address decision involving binary choice in adoption studies [4]. In this study, the following model was used:
where, vet_service is the veterinary service used by the farmers, while β1,…, β12 are coefficients associated with each explanatory variable and εi is the error term. Several factors were hypothesized to influence the farmers’ decision to use the veterinary services. The description of these factors is presented in Table 1. The choice of these explanatory variables was mainly based on the general working hypothesis and partly on empirical findings from literature, and, therefore, a positive or negative sign was assigned depending on the potential influence of a particular variable on use of veterinary services.
Variables | Description of the variables | Expected signs |
---|---|---|
Vet_service | Veterinary service used yes = 1, no = 0 | |
Village | Veterinary services available within the village = 1, otherwise = 0 | |
Family size | Family size (1–5) = 1, otherwise = 0 | |
Socially forward | Socially forward (general and OBC) =1, otherwise = 0 | |
Land holding | Land holding (ha.) (continuous) | |
Principal income | Principal source of income from agriculture = 1, otherwise = 0 | ± |
Training | Head of household attended any formal training in agriculture = 1, otherwise = 0 | |
Literate | Literate head of households = 1, otherwise = 0 | |
Like agri. | Farmer likes agriculture as a profession = 1, otherwise = 0 | |
Herd size | Herd size of milch dairy animals (continuous) | |
Agri. science centre | Whether accessed Agriculture Science Centre = 1, otherwise = 0 | |
Extension workers | Whether accessed extension workers = 1, otherwise = 0 | |
Literate * herd size | Interaction of literacy of head of household and herd size of milch dairy animals |
The marginal probability was calculated by multiplying the coefficient estimate by
Interaction terms are used extensively in nonlinear models, such as
Multicollinearity can undermine the statistical integrity of the model. Multicollinearity in
3. Results and discussion
3.1 Important dairy farmers characteristics
Descriptive statistics on dairy farmers’ characteristics are presented in Table 2. Among overall 1.65 million dairy farmers, 70.91% dairy farmers used veterinary services in the survey period. Around 43.64% dairy farmers were able to access veterinary services within the village itself. Half of dairy farmer household size (number of persons) was between 1 and 5. Large number (52.73%) of dairy farmers were self-employed in agriculture with the average land holding size of 1.55 ha. However, 56.97% dairy farmers’ principal source of income was agriculture alone. Head of the family played an important role in decision making process and hence, it is very important to study important characteristics of dairy households’ heads. From Table 2, it is reflected that 47.88% heads of dairy households were literate but less than 1% head of households had training in agriculture. In the survey, 61.21% dairy farmers admitted that they liked agriculture as a profession. Average herd size (number of animals) of milch animal per dairy farmer was about 3.51. Access to Agriculture Science Centre (Krishi Vigyan Kendra) and contact with extension workers may be proxies for access to information. From Table 2, it is reflected that only fraction (0.95%) of dairy farmers access the Agriculture Science Centre, personally. However, extension worker’s contact with the dairy farmers is somehow satisfactory.
Characteristics | Number | Percentage* |
---|---|---|
Sample households (million) | 1.65 | |
Veterinary services used (million) | 1.17 | 70.91 |
Veterinary services available within the village (million) | 0.72 | 43.64 |
Family size (1–5) (million) | 0.86 | 51.12 |
Self-employed in agriculture (million) | 0.87 | 52.73 |
Socially forward (million) | 1.17 | 70.91 |
Average land holding (ha.) | 1.55 | |
Principal source of income from agriculture (million) | 0.94 | 56.97 |
Head of household attended any formal training in agriculture (thousand) | 16.15 | 0.98 |
Literate head of households (million) | 0.79 | 47.88 |
Farmer likes agriculture as a profession (million) | 1.01 | 61.21 |
Average herd size of milch dairy animals (no.) | 3.51 | |
Whether accessed Agriculture Science Centre (thousand) | 15.65 | 0.95 |
Whether accessed extension workers (thousand) | 34.47 | 2.09 |
3.2 Factor(s) influencing the choice of veterinary services
Empirical estimates derived from the binary
Characteristicsb | Coefficientsa | S. E. | Z | P > Z |
---|---|---|---|---|
Veterinary services available within the village | 0.3896 | 0.1346 | 2.89 | 0.004*** |
Family size (1–5) | −0.1606 | 0.1366 | −1.18 | 0.24 |
Socially forward | −0.1353 | 0.1619 | −0.84 | 0.403 |
Land holding | 0.03844 | 0.0424 | 0.91 | 0.365 |
Principal source of income from agriculture | 0.578 | 0.1715 | 3.37 | 0.001*** |
Head of household attended any formal training in agriculture | −0.4072 | 0.6669 | −0.61 | 0.541 |
Literate head of households | 0.5338 | 0.232 | 2.3 | 0.021** |
Farmer likes agriculture as a profession | −0.0837 | 0.1478 | −0.57 | 0.571 |
Herd size of milch dairy animals | 0.1143 | 0.0476 | 2.4 | 0.016** |
Whether accessed Agriculture Science Centre | −0.3964 | 0.7081 | −0.56 | 0.576 |
Whether accessed extension workers | 0.7937 | 0.7276 | 1.09 | 0.275 |
Interaction of literacy of head of household and herd size of milch dairy animals | 0.0076 | 0.0625 | 0.12 | 0.903 |
Constant | 1.1764 | 0.7976 | 1.47 | 0.14 |
The Odds ratio is useful to determine the number of dairy farmers who used veterinary services. The Odds ratio is defined as the ratio of probability that dairy farmers used veterinary services to that of who did not use veterinary services. As number of dairy farmers in the sample is 1137 and 777 farmers are used veterinary services, the probability (
The observed proportional relationship between veterinary services available within the village and use of veterinary services implied that distance of availability positively influenced the farmer’s decision. The positive relationship was observed between literacy levels of family head and use of veterinary services. It implied that improving the literacy level of dairy households would increase the likelihood of veterinary service usage. Farmers who kept large number of dairy animals were more particular on use of veterinary services. In reality, farmers with large herds are relatively cautious regarding the use of veterinary services since this has economic implications on their enterprises. This also indicates that as commercial dairy farming increases it opens up new opportunities for veterinary doctors. The interaction term of educated head of households and herd size is positively related with the use of veterinary services but non-significant (Z-statistic is 0.12). The
Table 4 presents marginal effect for the variables, which were presented in Table 3 with significant coefficients for the use of veterinary services. These probabilities show how changes in specific variables affected the probabilities of a dairy farmers reacting positively towards use of veterinary services. Marginal effect computed for continuous variables were not comparable with those computed for binary variables. The prediction probability of model was very high (0.71) for the use of veterinary services. The dairy farmer’s response towards the use of veterinary services was highly influenced (12.05%) by the unit increase in income from agricultural activities. The result of marginal effect also indicated that, the unit increase in the literacy level of the family head increased the probability of veterinary services use by 11.05%. The next most influential variable was increase in veterinary services availability in the villages which enhanced the probability by 8.07% for the use of veterinary services.
Characteristicsa | Marginal effect | S. E. | Z | P > Z |
---|---|---|---|---|
Veterinary services available within the village | 0.0807 | 0.02757 | 2.93 | 0.003*** |
Family size (1–5) | −0.0334 | 0.02838 | −1.18 | 0.239 |
Socially forward | −0.0279 | 0.0331 | −0.84 | 0.398 |
Land holding | 0.008 | 0.0088 | 0.91 | 0.364 |
Principal source of income from agriculture | 0.1205 | 0.0357 | 3.38 | 0.001*** |
Head of household attended any formal training in agriculture | −0.091 | 0.1578 | −0.58 | 0.564 |
Literate head of households | 0.1105 | 0.0476 | 2.32 | 0.021** |
Farmer likes agriculture as a profession | −0.0174 | 0.0306 | −0.57 | 0.57 |
Herd size of milch dairy animals | 0.0238 | 0.0099 | 2.4 | 0.016** |
Whether accessed Agriculture Science Centre | −0.0885 | 0.167 | −0.53 | 0.596 |
Whether accessed extension workers | 0.1373 | 0.0996 | 1.38 | 0.168 |
Interaction of literacy of head of household and herd size of milch dairy animals | 0.0016 | 0.013 | 0.12 | 0.903 |
This study has shown the importance of identifying factors that determine the likelihood of using veterinary services by dairy farmers in Punjab. Descriptive analysis revealed that, for the majority of dairy farmers the principal source of income was agriculture and they possessed small landholding. Dairy farming offers an opportunity to these marginalized famers to diversify farming business and to secure livelihood. Based on the
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