Socio-economic Status of the Livestock-rearers in the Flood-prone Districts of Odisha

Flood has been found to be the most frequent to Odisha among all-natural calamities. Flood affects in same way to both humans as well as animal’s life. Animals, those who survived from these floods are threatened by the non-availability of feed and shelter. Fodder fields are also completely destroyed like other agricultural crops. These feed deprived and shelter less animals are stressed and immune-suppressed, thus become susceptible to contagious diseases. The present study was conducted to know the socio economic status of the livestock-rearers under the given resources viz. demographic, physical, economic, flood-related information and social. Ex-post Research Design was followed for the present study.A total of 120 livestock-rearers were selected, using simple random sampling method from 8 villages of 4 blocks from the 2 Districts of the Odisha for the purpose of the study. The respondents of the study area were marginal farmers having average operational land holding of 0.11 hectare. It was found that 31.74 percent of the average income of respondents was earned from crop cultivation, 26.00 percent from livestock. All the respondents of the studied area had experienced flood events during the last 10 years, which means the flood is a regular annual event in studied district. This study throws light on the existing conditions of the farmers of the flood-prone districts of Odisha, which is very fragile and needs immense care.