Relationship Between Profile and Attitude of Farm Women Towards Value Addition in Vegetable Crops

In Indian society, farm women have multi-dimensional role ranging from agricultural and allied activities to domestic activities. India is the second-largest producer of vegetables in the world next only to China and accounts for about 15 per cent of the world production of vegetables. At present, less than 2 per cent of fruits and vegetables are processed, even as our county ranks second in the world in terms of production. The preparation of value-added products is mostly confined to household/village or with in the easy access of farm women. Because most of the raw materials are available in the village, it is ideal to start as a rural or village enterprise. As a result of this value addition, rural residents would have a lot of job opportunities. The under employed force in rural areas can be profitably utilized. In this context there is a greater scope to go for value added products or processed food products or ready to eat products which can take care of effective utilization of time by the women folk. A questionnaire- based simple random sampling survey was conducted on 120 farm women of Kheda districts of Gujarat state. The statistical measures, such as SPSS and Microsoft excel were used. nearly three- fifth (59.17 per cent) of the farm women had moderately favourable attitude towards value addition in vegetable crops. Variables like education (0.499**), scientific orientation (0.446**), economic motivation (0.283**) and risk orientation (0.450**) of the farm women had positive and highly significant correlation with their attitude towards value addition in vegetable crops.