Rural Poverty and Small land holdings in Gudibanda

Abstract

Gudibanda a small town in Chickkaballapur district has been selected to study whether small land holdings can remove rural poverty. Five villages were earmarked and 200 samples collected from these villages where simple random sampling was carried out to find if the relation between rural poverty and farmers with small fragmented lands.Most of these small farmers grew vegetables such as brinjals, cowpeas, tomatoes, potatoes and beans. Also commercial flowers such as jasmine, roses, tuberoses and yellow crysanthamums were also cultivated. They earned a very small income of Rs 500 per month for vegetables and around 2000Rs to 2300Rs per month for flower sales that too during the festival months of January to April 2023.Their earnings depended mainly on the market prices that’s the selling rate of the main vegetable market in Gudibandasanthe or village fair. They also sold outside their villages in small groups and also tried transporting to Gudibanda main market. Can cultivating all these small vegetable farms bring income and sustain these flower and vegetable cultivators? Water scarcity coupled with lack of rural employment measures like MNREGA were the root cause of their problems. It was also the main reasons for rural urban migration.The main objective was to see if the cultivation of small farms could fetch moderate income for the farmers. The main suggestion was to adopt cooperative farming minus the problem of middlemen, how to solve the problem of selling in vegetable markets and finally to tackle the problem of rural unemployment and water scarcity.