Assets, resource use and income on marginal and small farms in Punjab

Punjab is an agriculturally developed state of India and has a type of land distribution slightly better than the national average. The present study showed that the small operational area along with low investment on machinery and irrigation structure were the limiting factors for the marginal and the small farmers. To make full use of the available human labour, dairy farming was adopted. However, this enterprise again did not yield much perhaps due to uneconomical herd size and due to the fact that the number of buffaloes reared was higher that the cross-breed cows. The higher operational area and more milch animals and relatively higher investment on machinery and irrigation structure in Zone-II compared to Zone-III and I showed that gross returns for per farm both of marginal and small farmer was highest in Zone-II followed by Zone-III and I, respectively.