Impact of Commercialization of Small Holder Farming on Income and Employment in Assam

The present study has been conducted in Nagaon district of Assam, where small farms contribute much to the rural economy of this district, but very little is known about the impact of commercialization. Keeping this in view, the study was designed to examine the impact of commercialization of small holder farming on income and employment. Different cost concepts like variable cost and fixed cost, were considered for calculation of total cost. The returns like gross income, farm business income, family labor income, net income over total cost, income over variable cost and income over fixed cost were considered. Commercialization has a positive effect on income and employment of small farms. The family labour income in 2015 was 53463, which depicted a rise of 44.95 per cent over income in 2012. The net income ( 35800) of 2015 recorded a 75.48 per cent increase over that of 2012 ( 20400). In the case of labour, pooled value of family labour was observed to be increased by 9.77 (100 man-days) per cent over that of 2012 and hired labour increased 15.23 per cent over that of 2012.