An economic evaluation of rice processing mills in Jammu district of Jammu & Kashmir union territory

The study was conducted in Jammu district. The Jammu district was purposively selected for the study on the basis of maximum number of rice mills in the area. Two Rice mills were selected located in R.S. Pura belt as the area is well known for paddy production. The study was of exploratory nature and convenience method of sampling was used. The mill-1 & mill-2 involves two types of channels for procuring the paddy viz; commission agentsmillers (channel-1) & farmers-millers (channel-2). The total cost involved in rice mills through channel-1 and channel-2 was 2720.28/qtl. and 1926.21/qtl. for mill-1. In case of mill-2, the total cost incurred was 1963.60/ qtl. and 3894.35/qtl. for both channel-1 and channel-2 respectively. The gross returns the mills obtained for both channels were 2902.50/qtl and 4261.50/qtl for both mill-1 and mill-2 respectively. Thus the net return mill-1 gained was higher in case of channel-2 ( 976.29/qtl.) and for mill-2, net return was higher through channel-1 ( 2297.90/qtl.). Therefore from the study, we have concluded that for mill-1, channel-2 is more efficient and for mill-2, channel-1 is more beneficial.