Input Use and Efficiency across Stages of Crop Production: A Micro Level Decision Making Process of Farmers

The area specific technology has put limits on the applicability of diffusion model in a resource diverse country like India and it accentuated the relevance of Schultz's high-Pay off input model which emphasizes on rational resource allocation as the key for input use efficiency. In this backdrop, the study seeks to analyze the efficiency of input use across different stages of crop production. This study analyzed the input efficiency across different stages of crop cultivation for different crops in two diverse agro climatic regions like assured irrigated wet region representing modern agriculture and drought prone rainfed zone representing the traditional agriculture. The linear regression and Controlled Cobb-Douglas model results indicate that while vegetation stage inputs contribute more on output in wet area, maturation stage inputs are more efficient in dry area. The findings vividly manifest that there remains a multitude of input efficiency differentials across crops, across stages of production and across regions.