Department of Economics and Sociology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana – 141 004, Punjab.
Punjab is not a soybean producing or consuming state traditionally, but in the recent years, stress on diversification and value-addition of agriculture has led to higher growth of processing units in the state and soya processing is one such industry. Two randomly selected soya units have been studied in this paper. Soya milk has been found to be the main product in both the sampled units besides tafu, namkeen pakoras/biscuits and soya flour. The value addition has been found to be very high in processing of raw soyabean, to the extent of Rs 5625 per day in small-sixed unit and Rs 9925 per day in the medium-sized unit. However, utilized capacity has been found very low in both units due to higher fixed investment on machinery and hence net returns have been found negative in both the units, indicating benefit-cost ratio less than one. However, returns to fixed farm resources have been found positive. The break-even value of production has been observed higher than that of the existing sales realization in the sampled units. The study has emphasized on the need to increase capacity utilization to turn the units economically viable.
