Accessibility of Farm Machinery Services to Small and Marginal Farmers — A Case Study of Custom Hiring Service Centres in Raichur District of Karnataka

Mechanization of agricultural operations is the need of hour in Indian Agriculture. But, farm implements or machines being costly are not accessible to small and marginal farmers. However, through custom hiring of agricultural machines, even small farmers can get the benefit of farm mechanization. This study has assessed the performance of custom hiring service centres (CHSCs) in Raichur district of Karnataka. A CHSC, on an average, covered 11 villages, 10,386 ha of cultivable area and 2926 small and marginal farmers. The utilization of machineries in CHSCs varied from 0 to 100 per cent, depending upon the type of machineries, suitability to the area, awareness about CHSCs, etc. It was observed that private owners charged higher rates for machineries than by CHSCs. However, the average net returns for a CHSC were very low (` 8822/- per annum). The study has also revealed that only 25 per cent CHSCs were high performing, another 25 per cent were medium performing and 50 per cent were low performing. The CHSCs have helped in increasing the productivity and income of small and marginal farmers by 10–15 per cent. Therefore, there is a need to improve the performance of CHSCs for the benefit of farming community.