Quantification of Incremental Benefits and Change in Input Use Pattern under Laser Land Levelling in comparison with Conventional Land Levelling in Haryana

The investigation aimed to find monetary benefits of Laser Land Levelling (LLL) compared to conventional land leveling (CLL) in Karnal and Sirsa district of Haryana. These two districts were selected purposively because these have the highest area under paddy-wheat and cotton-wheat cropping patterns, respectively. Theequation of Aryal et al. (2014) was explicitly used to estimate incremental benefits from laser land leveling. Also, input use pattern of machine labor, seed, plant protection chemicals, human labor, yield, and irrigation was considered. In the paddy-wheat cropping pattern of Karnal district, the annual net benefits of using laser land levelling were estimated to be 11450.81. In contrast, per LLL operation, net benefits were estimated to be 34352. Similarly, on the same lines in the cotton-wheat cropping pattern of Sirsa district, the annual net benefits of LLL were estimated to be 7212.61. In contrast, per LLL operation, net benefits were estimated to be 28850. As far as the input use pattern is concerned, the study showed that machine labour and yield increased under LLL while in both districts. In contrast, all other inputs i.e., seed, fertilizer, human labor, plant protection, chemicals, irrigation, were reduced, showing resource conservation potential of LLL. Hence, the study recommended adopting this resource conservation technology and tapping its potential benefits so that farmers may get benefitted from this ultimate technology.

Adopting Laser land levelling helps in conserving irrigation and fertilizer significantly, and net returns are more under compared to conventional land levelling.