Socioeconomic Characteristics of Beneficiaries of Rural Credit (A case study of D.I.Khan District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan)

Abstract

Agriculture is not only the backbone of our food, livelihood and ecological security system, but is also the very soul of our sovereignty. In Pakistan population density is high and has been increasing day by day and agricultural land has been decreasing because of fragmenting or converting it into residential plots. To meet the domestic food requirements and raising standard of life use of improved production technologies developed by research is must. In this behalf government of Pakistan has been extending loan to poor farmers for adoption of new farm technology; a capital intensive technology. Right adoption of new farm technology depends on different demographic factors of farmers.  Therefore objective of the paper was to see who benefits more of credit. Primary data regarding different determinants effecting well being of farmers after use of credit was collected from 320 farmers who participated in credit using stratified sampling technique through structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA and Linear regression model was applied with the help of SPSS. Education and visiting agriculture information centre were found significant suggesting younger more educated farmers who visits information centre be provided credit ,as they had ability to improve their standard.

Keywords: Agriculture, Rural credit; house hold, economic welfare, farmers.