Table 3.5 Distribution of Village Households on the Basis of Owned Land Area Number of households Area (in cents) Dry land Wet land Total Nil 5(0.67) 493(65.73) 5(0.67) Less than 5 115(15.33) ---------- 101(13.47) 5 – 10 243(32.40) ---------- 194(25.87) 10 – 25 235(31.33) 5(0.67) 128(17.07) 25 – 50 87(11.60) 32(4.27) 59(7.87) 50 – 100 35(4.67) 62(8.27) 81(10.80) 100 – 250 25(3.33) 109(14.53) 119(15.87) 250 – 500 3(0.40) 37(4.93) 45(6.00) 500 and above 2(0.27) 12(1.60) 18(2.40) Total 750(100.00) 750(100.00) 750(100.00) 3.2 Socio-Economic Background of Paddy Farmers On the basis of their owned paddy cultivating lands, farmers in the study area can be classified into marginal farmers with less than 100 cents small farmers with 100 to 250 cents, medium farmers with 250 to 500 cents and large farmers with more than 500 cents. Out of the 750 households covered in our pilot survey, 257 households own paddy lands with varying sizes within a wide range of 20 to 1500 cents. Among the owners of paddy fields 99 households own less than one acre, 109 households own 1 to 2.5 acres, 37 households own 2.5 to 5 acres and 12 households own more than 5 acres of wetlands. After excluding those households, which had leased out their entire paddy fields during the last crop season, we selected 90 households by taking 30 percent each of the marginal and small farmers, 40 percent of medium farmers and cent percent of large farmers. Thus the selected sample consists of 30 marginal farmers, 33 small farmers, 15 medium farmers and 12 large farmers.
