Resource Use Efficiency of Crops in North-Eastern Dry Zone of Karnataka

This study is to analyze the extent of efficiency in resource use of major crops cultivated in North-Eastern Dry Zone (NEDZ) of Karnataka. The study was conducted by selecting 30 farmers each under rainfed condition, borewell irrigation and canal irrigation in Manvi and Raichur taluks of Raichur district in NEDZ of Karnataka. The resource use efficiency of crops was estimated using Cobb-Douglas production function. The result shows that the ratio of MVP to MFC was away from one, in most of the crops highlighting the inefficiency in resource use. Resources were not economic optimally utilized in most of the crops. There is great scope for use of human labour (MVP to MFC ratio was 2.13) and nitrogen (10.39) in rainfed cotton, human labour (1.79) and groundwater (8.93) irrigation in cotton crop irrigated with groundwater. The human labour (0.945) was optimally utilized and there is great scope to use of machine labour (8.57) in canal paddy. There is scope for use of human labour (2.09), bullock labour (3.28), machine labour (4.44), nitrogen (0.29) and capital cost (2.51) in rainfed redgram.

The ratio of MVP to MFC was differed from unity in all major crops, indicating scope for reallocation of expenditure among various resources.

Among the different inputs, machine labour has the grater scope for its enhanced usage to augment the output and substantial use of groundwater will enhance productivity of the crops.