Rationale of resource use through farm diversification

In Indian agriculture, the performance of monsoon directly governs the economy of about 92 million hectares of dryland where very little supplemental water is available for irrigation. Owing to low, erratic and uncertain rainfall, crop yields in drought-prone areas are not only low but also highly variable. This makes farm returns low and uncertain. Maximizing farm returns under these conditions by supporting an efficient enterprise system is considered as one of the important ways to improve the growth prospects of the farm-firm and hence of the farm economy of the region. The study conducted in the Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu on landholdings of big, small and marginal categories, has revealed, as expected, that the increase in aggregate net income was higher under irrigated conditions than in dryland farms, as higher-value crops could be grown in the gardenland farms due to irrigation facilities. A comparison of the performance efficiency under two conditions, gardenland and dryland, has confirmed the hypothesis that inclusion of dairy and other allied activities in the farming system enhances farming efficiency in terms of output-input ratio and reduction in risk.