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Employment opportunities and status of food security across rural-urban interface of Bangalore

University of Agricultural Sciences (GKVK), Dept. of Agricultural Economics, India

Abstract

Urbanisation and agriculture is providing employment opportunity to millions of people through industrialisation and commercialisation. It is also helping the households to improve their incomes and living standards. In addition, creating employment opportunity through urbanisation and agriculture also leads to major changes in food consumption pattern and food purchasing behaviour. The study is carried out in the framework of Indo-German collaborative research project ‘The Rural-Urban Interface of Bengaluru - A space of Transition in Agriculture, Economics and Society’, sub project ’Food Insecurity at different stages of Urbanisation’, funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) of the Government of India. The present study focused on how the verity of employment opportunities across rural-urban interface of Bangalore had influence on food security status. Primary data was collected from north transect of Bengaluru covering 510 respondents. Employment opportunities identified in rural-urban interface of Bangalore are agriculture, agriculture labourer, livestock, off-farm, non-farm and government employment. The major source of employment in rural gradient based on the percentage of employment generation was agriculture sector (33.03 %) followed by non-farm (31.11 %) and livestock (13.36 %) sector. In Transition the major source of employment was observed in non-farm sector (38.10 %) followed by agriculture (22.87 %) and livestock sector (14.12 %). While in urban gradient it was non-farm sector (49.03 %) followed by off-farm (29.24 %) and livestock sector (10.71 %). The percent of food security was more for the households employed in Government sector in all the three gradients, since monthly/annual income generated from public sector was higher than agriculture sector. It is quite interesting to observe that, in all the sectors of employment, the number of food secure households increased from rural to urban gradients, it is a result of increased employment opportunities at urban gradient. In spite of many Government programmes on food security, still there is an existence of food insecurity in the country. Hence in future along with the implementation of food security programmes, creation of off-farm, non-farm and self-owned employment opportunities at the rural area will help to improve the food security status of rural households as like urban households.

Keywords: Agriculture. employment opportunity, food security, rural-urban interface, urbanisation

Contact Address: Ashwini B C, University of Agricultural Sciences (GKVK), Dept. of Agricultural Economics, Bengaluru, India, e-mail: ashwinismile813gmail.com