Land and Livestock Holdings Survey Visit 1, January - December 2003

NSS 59th Round

In the Land and Livestock Holdings surveys of the NSSO, two types of holdings, namely, household ownership holdings and operational holdings, are enumerated by interviewing the sample households. Data are also collected on the livestock and agricultural
implements owned by households. In the present survey, however, data on agricultural implements of households were not collected, as this was being done in another NSS survey called “Situation Assessment Survey of Farmers”, carried out concurrently.

There were four subjects of enquiry in the 59th round of NSS: Land and Livestock Holdings, Debt and Investment, Consumer Expenditure, and Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) of Farmers. With the exception of consumer expenditure, all the enquiries required two visits to each sample household for collection of data: one during January to August and the other during September to December. Accordingly, each sample first-stage unit (village or block) was visited twice by the investigator to whom it was allotted. A small proportion of households could not be surveyed a second time due to varying reasons; for these, only one set of data could be collected.
Some items of information were in any case collected in the first visit only; these included general household characteristics, age, sex, educational level and other characteristics of household members. Also, importantly, information on livestock owned was collected only in
the first visit. The field work during the first visit included the canvassing of the listing schedule (Sch. 0.0) and selection of the sample households.

Items of enquiry: Particulars of land owned, land leased out and leased in, and types and terms of lease formed the main body of information for the study of ownership holdings. For the operational holdings, data were collected on size, composition, tenurial form, land use, extent of irrigation, fragmentation of holding, drainage facilities and other related aspects. Finally, an inventory of livestock owned by the households on the date of survey was obtained. Further, for each operational holding, information on its size, composition, tenurial form, main use, agricultural activities and attached farm workers will be collected for each agricultural season as well as for the whole agricultural year of 2002-03. In addition, an inventory of livestock will be taken during the first visit from each sample household.

Reference period: The survey was conducted in two visits and some items of information were be collected in only one of them. The formats of different blocks were made in such a way that they remain the same for schedules of both the visits. Information on holdings operated during the Kharif season of the agricultural year 2002-03 was collected in first visit, and on holdings operated during the Rabi season, in the second visit. In addition, some general information on operational holdings with the agricultural year 2002-03 as the reference period was also collected in the second visit. This information did not, however, include the area of the operational holding with the entire agricultural year as reference period. Households have therefore been classified in this report, for the purpose of presentation of livestock data, by size of holding for the Kharif season (from data collected in the first visit), and not by size of holding with the entire agricultural year as reference period as was done in the 48th round. It may be noted that the data on livestock were collected during the first visit to the sample households.