Potential and Constraints in Contract Farming of Chicory Cultivation

The present paper analyzes the potential and constraints of chicory, a crop introduced in Punjab agriculture through contract farming in the Punjab state. Primary data pertaining to the year 2014–15 was collected through purposive sampling technique from a sample of 60 chicory growers scattered over 38 villages of five districts of Punjab namely Amritsar, Jalandhar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur and Tarn Taran. The average operational holding was 15.06 hectares, out of which, on an average 8.12 hectares was owned by the sample farmers and 6.94 hectares was leased in. 85 percent of the farmers cultivated upto 3 hectares of land in chicory cultivation. Out of the hired labour-use, hoeing covered a major proportion 50.12 percent followed by harvesting 49.14 percent, i.e. respectively. Thus, major share of human labour was used on two operations that is, hoeing and harvesting, leaving 5 to 6 percent of labour-use on rest of operations. The total machine used was 88.60 hours per hectare which comprised of 88.05 hours of owned machine and 0.55 hours of hired machine. The operational cost for cultivating chicory came out to be 59620per hectare. The cost incurred on human labour came out to be 3144 per hectare for family and attached labour, whereas it was 30434 on hired labour. The average production of chicory came out to be 343.69 q per ha. The average price realized was 335.25 per quintal. Thus the gross returns came out to be 115202 per ha. The returns over variable cost came out to be 55582 per ha. As the gross returns were higher than operational cost of cultivating chicory, a benefit-cost ratio of 1.93 was realized. The regression coefficients for crop duration and tractor use came out to be positively significant at one percent level indicating that if crop duration and tractor use is increased by one percent, the productivity of chicory would increase by 1.033 and 0.457 percent respectively. The regression coefficient for seed was negatively significant indicating that one percent increase in seed rate would decrease chicory productivity by 0.375 percent. The important constraints in the cultivation of this crop were delayed payment, high wages of hired labour, inadequate facilities for unloading the crop and lack of technical knowledge.