Department of Economics and Sociology, College of Basic Sciences and Humanities, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, 141004, Punjab, India
Online published on 13 December, 2019.
Punjab agriculture used to be well diversified, but the remunerative prices of paddy-wheat and assured procurement turned it over the decades into a monoculture of these two crops at the cost of other crops, including oilseeds. To take acreage away from water-guzzling paddy and promote the various minor crops for diversification, sesamum could be considered. This study, based on primary data pertaining to the year 2017–18 and collected from 60 farmers from major sesamum-growing districts of Punjab, brings out that sesamum is less input-intensive and more environment-friendly. Sesamum cultivation yields lower absolute returns but a higher benefit-cost ratio (3.16) than paddy (2.75). To promote large-scale sesamum cultivation, it is necessary to remove several biotic and abiotic constraints: the incidence of disease, insects/pests and weeds; the lack of quality/HYV seeds and price information; and price variability.
