Pantnagar Journal of Research

Abstract

In India, maize is the third most important food grain which constitutes around 10 per cent of the total volume of cereals produced after rice and wheat. As per 2021 -22 data leading producer state of maize is Karnataka with 5.2 million MT (15.53 % of India), followed by Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The present study aimed to study the cost of and returns from maize cultivation to know its profitability across the farm size groups in more maize producing (Devanagere district) and less maize producing (Tumkur district) districts of the state of Karnataka. The primary data was collected for the year 2017(kharif) by personally interviewing 160 sample farmers. CACP concept was used to estimate cost of cultivation in the study. The results revealed that large farms are mostly substituting machine power to conventional bullock power for performing different operations in maize cultivation. Large farmers of Devanagere district are having more access to owned machineries compare to Tumkur’ large farmers, indicates Davanagere’ large farms are economically better than Tumkur’ large farms. As similar to Tumkur, the use of machine hour is highest at large farms, whereas use of bullock labour in marginal farm size group. The seed rate of Davanagere district is lesser than Tumkur but the overall cost of seed is higher in Davanagere (Rs. 3119). It may be due to use of high-quality seeds by marginal and small farms in Davanagere compared to same category in Tumkur. The net price received by farmer for main product sale in villages or mandis was lesser than MSP. This leads to negative returns at Cost C₂ and C₃ across the farm holdings. It indicates that the farmers are not getting any economic profit as it is not covering the costs incurred for providing managerial services by farmer himself. The return per rupee of investment at Cost C₃ in Devanagere district was Rs. 0.87 on overall basis, whereas Rs. 0.82 in Tumkur district. There is a need of creating awareness among the farmers in case of crop insurance to mitigate drought, about MSP to increase bargaining power, regarding co-operative benefits to save cost in marketing and other farm works and use of high-quality seeds along with other developed techniques in increasing productivity of maize.