Dairy is one of the prominent livelihoods for smallholder farmers across India. It plays a significant role in sustaining the rural livelihood and provides employment to 18 million people and nearly 70 percent of them are women. It acts as an alternative source of income for the farm family. The study was conducted in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh with the objectives to study the socio-economic status of dairy farmers. The sample size of 160 dairy farmers was randomly selected for the study and data were collected through personal interview method during 2019-20. A multi-stage random sampling technique was adopted for the study. Banda consists of eight blocks, out of which two blocks were selected randomly viz. Badokhar Khurd & Tindwari. Four villages were selected randomly from each selected block to constitute a total of eight villages and 20 Dairy farmers were selected from each selected village. Majority of respondents were from the middle age group within the range of 34-54 years and most of them were less educated. It was observed that most of the respondents had marginal landholding with medium annual income ranging between 1 lakh to 3 lakh rupees. It was reported from the study that the majority of the respondents had a joint and large family with most of them having Kaccha housing patterns. Most of the respondents were involved in dairy & wage-earning with a medium level of herd size (3-5). It is reported from the study that the majority of the respondents preferred medium mass media utilization & don’t had membership of any organization.

Highlights

• Majority of the respondents (55%) possessed medium size of herd with 3 to 5 animals.
• More than fifty per cent (54.17 per cent) of respondents had an annual income between ` 1 lakh to 3 lakh.
• Majority of the respondents were found with marginal landholdings.
• Social participation of the respondents was found very low. Majority of the respondents (54.4%) had no participation in any social organisation.