Regional Variations in Pulse Cultivation in Maharashtra

This study has examined region-wise land-use, cropping pattern, resource-use, and costs and return structure of the farmers in Maharashtra based on the primary data collected during the year 2013–14 from 600 farm families (201 chick pea, 168 pigeon pea, 92 green gram and 33 black gram). The study has concluded that cash crops (sugarcane, onion and cotton) occupied a dominant position in the cropping pattern contributing 27.51 per cent to the gross cropped area, followed by cereals (27.16%) and pulses (15.17%). The cropping intensity has been found lowest in Konkan region (56.60%) and the highest in Vidarbha region (142.65%) with average of 118.14 per cent at the state level. At the overall level, the use of human labour (man-days/ha) for pigeon pea, chickpea, green gram and black gram was 102.8, 54.2, 62.4 and 68.9, respectively and of bullock labour (pair days) was 11.8, 2.8, 6.1 and 6.6, respectively. The maximum use of machine labour (20 hours) was observed in pigeon pea. The manure-use was observed low in pulse crops in all the regions of Maharashtra. At the overall level the productivity (q/ha) of chickpea, pigeon pea, green gram and black gram was 15.21, 15.03, 4.38 and 7.76, respectively.