CONSTRAINTS TO LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION IN THE PUNJAB, PAKISTAN : A CASE STUDY OF DISTRICT SARGODHA

Abstract

Livestock is an important component of rural economy especially in developing countries including Pakistan. Its share in overall country’s GDP is more than the share of crop sector. Inspite of its importance, this sector is facing a number of problems/constraints. In order to explore those constraints, Present study was conducted during 2013 in district Sargodha. For this study , Sargodha district was selected being famous for variety of crops as well as livestock. The data were collected through structured interview schedule from 2000 randomely selected livestock farmers from five tehsils of the district.A mixture of both qualitative and quantitative metods were used for the collection of data. The data were finally analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Both inference and correlational statistics were used for the interpretation of results. It was concluded that about 40.0 percent of respondents were illiterate. Among literate respondents only a small percentage (5.2%) of respondents had education with ten years of schooling and only 3.5 percent of them had education more than 10 years of schooling. The livelihood strategies of majority (42.0%) of respondents were both crop and livestock farming. More than half (55.7%) of respondents adopt livestock farming on semi-commercial basis. mon i erent constraints ace y livestoc armers hi h ener y rices as on the to ith hi hest mean value rom the results o chi-square statistics it was further concluded that educational status and accessibility of respondents to the city are highly important to overcome the constraints faced by livestock farmers in the study area.