Efficiency of conservation agriculture: Evidences from wheat farms in Eastern Uttar Pradesh

India is the second largest producer of wheat in the world and Uttar Pradesh is the largest wheat growing state in the country. The major challenge to wheat production in the state is the enhancing of its productivity and profitability. Adoption of zero tillage technique is one such step in this direction. The paper has compared the economics and efficiency of wheat production in Uttar Pradesh with zero tillage (ZT) adopters and non-adopters and assessed the contribution of technology and inputs to the increased productivity due to zero tillage for the years 2013–14. For the study, CACP cost concept and Cob-Douglas production function were used to find out the economics and efficiency of wheat in zero till system. The result indicates that the net return was found 80% higher in case of adopters than nonadopters. The study has also observed that ZT technology has potential to provide additional income to farmers and help in conservation of scarce resources. The resource use efficiency analysis showed that zero tillage adoption saved machine labour and seed than under conventional method.