Journal of Agricultural Development and Policy

The present study examines the status of farm labour employment and its productivity in the major crops cultivated in Punjab state. The study is based on data derived from cost of cultivation survey data and various issues of Statistical Abstracts of Punjab from 1998-99 to 2018-19. Results highlight that the major crops (wheat, paddy and cotton) of Punjab were being cultivated on 80.80 per cent of gross cropped area in 1998-99 which has increased to 88.03 per cent in 2018-19. Also, the area under wheat and paddy has increased over the period whereas that of cotton has declined. Labour usage (hr./ha) has reduced in all crops both for hired and family labour except cotton. It is mainly because machinery has replaced both human and animal labour, while in case of cotton crop mechanization has not been adopted due to various reasons, so labour usage (hr./ha) in cotton has rather increased. It is due to increase in per hectare picking hours mainly because of manifolds increase in yield during the study period. Between 1998-99 to 2018-19, farm labour wage rate (Rs./ha) has also increased 6.07 times in paddy, while 5.07 times in wheat and 5.25 times in cotton. Labour productivity experiences a significant increase computed using labour man-hours as the denominator rather than the total labour cost incurred for crop cultivation. In other words, for the selected crops, both the value of output (Rs./ha) and yield (kg/ha) having experienced increase with each labour man-hour utilized in cultivation. However, the scenario shifts entirely when the estimates are based on the total labour cost (Rs./ha) incurred for crop cultivation as the denominator. In this case, the average labour productivity either declines or shows negligible improvement with an increase in the labour cost for the crops. It appears that the labour productivity is getting dampened because of slow growth in value of crop output as compared to the increasing labour cost required for cultivating different crops. This means that along with the improvement in production process, the need is to improve the supporting system that can help increasing the value of crop output.