Agricultural Economics Research Review

The paper has attempted to find the decision criteria practised by the farmers for using water for irrigation in farming and also has developed an optimum plan from 108 randomly selected farmers from Haldwani block of Nainital district of Uttarakhand in the year 2015–16. Likert scale technique and t-statistics was used to find the most relevant decision criteria practised by the farmers in using the water for irrigation in farming, while linear programming was used to obtain optimum plans for various decision criteria. The study has found that maximization of total gross margin (TGM), minimization of risks, minimization of total labour-use and minimization of total working capital were the main decision-making criteria of farmers. The optimal values of total gross margin was increased by 7.34 per cent in the optimum crop plan of maximization of TGM, while risk value, labour use and working capital use saw a decline under the decision of minimization of risk, minimization of total labour use and minimization of working capital. Risks decreased by 11.94 per cent in minimization of risk objective function, labour hours declined by 28.05 per cent, and working capital by 18.99 per cent from the existing values.