Nature and extent of adoption and knowledge of farmers regarding Happy Seeder

Wheat is major cropping system in North West India with cropping intensity of nearly 200 %. The huge quantity of paddy straw after the combine harvesting of paddy is to be managed in 15-20 days to plant next succeeding wheat crop. Keeping in mind this short window of time, farmers prefer to burn rice residue after combine harvesting of crop because residues interfere with tillage and seeding operations for the next crop. According to a report by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers welfare (2018), total paddy straw produced in Haryana and Punjab together is 28.10 million tonnes (2018 estimates) out of which 11.3 million tonnes was burnt in the fields. Though a number of machines are available for straw management, Happy Seeder is one of the unique techniques which is used for sowing wheat in standing stubbles of crop residue. The study was conducted in two agro-climate zones of Haryana namely dry zone and wet zone. Two districts i.e. Kaithal and Fatehabad were randomly selected from both the zones. From each of two selected districts, one block was i.e. Pundri from Kaithal & Ratia from Fatehabad were randomly selected for the purpose of the study. After the selection of blocks, a cluster of villages were randomly selected for the purpose of the study. 30 adopters and 30 non-adopters respondents were selected from each block on the whole 120 respondents were selected for the purpose of the study. The analysis clearly revealed that majority of the respondents i.e. 51.66% lie at medium level of adoption level followed by 20.0% at low and 28.33% at high level. With regard to education 33.3% of the respondents had education up to secondary school & above category, 30.0% of the respondents had education up to primary school, 17.5% of the respondents had education upto middle school, and 19.2% of the respondents were illiterate. With regards to the caste, majority of the respondents belonged to the general caste i.e. 75.2% where as 12.5% of the respondents were from backward class and 11.3% of the ...