Economic Efficiency of Farmers on Paddy Cultivated Farms in Raichur District of Karnataka, India

Abstract

This work is focused on investigating the economic efficiency of farmers on paddy cultivated farms in Raichur district of Karnataka, India. The Raichur district was selected as study area because of highest fertilizer consumption in the Karnataka state. Paddy crops were selected for the study because which has highest net cultivable area and also highest chemical fertilizer consumption in the study area. In the study area, there were very few recent studies focused on usage of inputs for the crops under cultivation, this study help in found that farmers are using efficient inputs for the crops under cultivation, which result into a gap in input use. The results of the study will be great useful to the policy makers to formulate policy related to efficient utilisation inputs to enhance the crop output at the same time reduce the cost of cultivation and maximise the profit.  The study was based on the primary data collected through survey method from paddy cultivated farmers 60 farmers in Raichur district during 2015-16. For paddy cultivation among small farmers results of technical, allocative and economic efficiency indicated that 36.67 per cent, 16.67 per cent and 10 per cent of small farmers had efficiency scores above 0.9 in production of paddy, about 26.67 per cent and 16.67 per cent of the farmers were technically efficient with score ranges between 0.7-0.8 and 0.8-0.9. Similarly in large farmers 33.33 per cent, 26.67 per cent and 10 per cent of technical, allocative and economic efficiency scores above 0.9 in the production of paddy. It is clear that most of the small and large farmers were economically inefficient, however, there is scope to utilise the available resources for paddy cultivation farmers in the study area. Therefore both the categories of farmers need to practice recommended dosage of application in fertilizers and also other inputs as per the package of practice given by State Agriculture Universities (SAU) in order to achieve the 100 per cent efficiency. Hence, there is a need to conduct the awareness programmes on the efficient use of farm resources without affecting the crop yield.