Department of Agricultural Economics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore-641 003, Tamil Nadu
Online published on 5 December, 2018.
This paper has analysed the costs, returns, technical efficiency and constraints in the seed and commercial production of vegetables in Palakkad district in Kerala during 2016–17. The sample size selected was 140 with 70 farmers each for seed and commercial production. Chilli and snake-gourd were selected for the study. The cost and returns analyses show that the vegetable seed production is profitable than commercial vegetable production. Cobb-Douglas Stochastic Frontier production function has shown that inputs viz., human labour, machinery and fertilizer were significant factors in production. The mean technical efficiencies were found to be 77% in chilli seed production, 83% in snake-gourd seed production, 84% in chilli vegetable production and 90% in snake- gourd vegetable production. High cost of insecticides and fungicides was identified as the major constraint faced by the farmers.
