Economic Impact of Mushroom Interventions among Hill Farmers of Almora District in Uttarakhand

The paper has studied the economic impact of mushroom interventions among hill farmers of Almora district in Uttarakhand by using capital budgeting technique. The study has shown that the foremost activity in mushrooms was value addition in button mushroom whose contribution was highest in annual income (17%), after crops (48%) and animal husbandry (22%). The mushroom cultivation (oyster and button mushroom production) provided 13.9 per cent share in total annual income. The study ha also revealed that technology has proved to be an employment generation activity. The button mushroom production gave them 4 per cent employment, followed by oyster mushroom production (3.1%) and value addition activity (1.2%). The study has further revealed that the net present value (NPV) increased to 236534 after investments made in the mushroom technology by the farmers. Returns on investment (279.6%) in all the enterprises have shown a positive relationship between profits earned and investments made by the farmers in mushroom production and value-addition technology. The adopted technology has shown positive impact on all the economic indicators and farmers were able to increase their efficiencies in terms of productivity, profitability and employment generation.