Economics of rice cultivation in west Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh and strategies to reduce cost of cultivation

The present study was carried out in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh to investigate the cost of cultivation and profitability of rice particularly across different farm sizes during 2013–14. Multistage stratified random sampling technique was adopted for selection of the sample where rice cultivators were stratified into five groups based on the size of operational holding. The cost of cultivation for all the farms was found to be 64944.92 ha⁻¹ with lowest on small farms (62618.06ha⁻¹) and highest on large farms (68598.46ha⁻¹) implying that cost of cultivation increased with increase in farm size. Human labour constituted the major component (36.35per cent) of the total cost of cultivation. The amount spent on fertilizers was highest on large farms (6877.86 ha⁻¹). The cost of plant protection chemicals was found to be highest on large farms (7702.44 ha⁻¹) and least on small farms (5423.78 ha⁻¹) thus implying a direct relationship between cost incurred on plant protection chemicals and farm size. Low cost machines may be included in the government programmes and extension activities to reduce the cost of human labour. Wherever excessive fertilizer is used it has to be streamlined and the department of Agriculture can recommend the optimum dosage of fertilizers after conducting soil testing and also give wide publicity about the possible adverse impact on crop and soil if excessive fertilizer is used. Farmers should be encouraged to use organic pesticides which can be made at the farmers ’home thus simultaneously making use of the livestock instead of costly plant protection chemicals.