Sustainability of Commercial Crop Profitability and Enhanced Farm Income Levels on Smallholder Farming in Closed Sugarmill Command Area in Bihar State

The paper aims to study the impact of policy changes introduced through agricultural roadmaps in Bihar state in enhancing the farm profitability and income of the smallholder agriculture in the state. The paper is based on an analysis of crop cultivation behavior of 36 smallholder farmers for two time periods of 3 years each, period 1 from 2014-15 to 2016-17 and period 2 from 2017-18 to 2019-20, in Vaishali district of Bihar State. The smallholders who were following the conventional cropping pattern of rice-wheat earlier shifted to commercial cropping (brinjal, tobacco, flowers, vegetables like ladies fingers and cucurbits) during period 1 by allocating 42 per cent of GCA to commercial crops under the influence of new policy initiatives, favorable farm and market situations. The main factors responsible for this shift was the need for cash inflows on daily basis, the awareness creation with the opening of more number of fertilizers and pesticides sale-points, and the easy availability of the leased-in land. The change towards commercial cropping resulted in higher profitability and farm income. The farm income generated was Rs.4.0 lacs per ha in period 1 and was 5.42 times more than under the conventional farming in period 2. The casual labour absorption during this period was also quite high, 190 days per farm (317 days per ha) and the casual labour use was to the extent of 79.2 per cent of the total labour requirement. The farm prices were lower than the declared MSPs except for the pulses. The same small holders abandoned the commercial cropping to a greater extent in period 2. The main reasons responsible for shifting back to conventional cropping was the poor rain water drainage on account of uplands and contiguous low lands in the village resulting in continuous flooding ranging from a week to a month long period, and the very low prices of commercial vegetable crops during one year. In order to sustain the commercial cropping and higher incomes to small holders in the state, strengthening of market infrastructure like cold storages, agro-processing units, crop based support services and market intellingence. Further, the village/block level drainage cum irrigation works need to be designed and massive investment is required to execute the ground-level works under qualified technical supervision and as a major inter-departmental project or a MGNREGA work for increasing farm income as well as non-farm employment in the area. Locally developed institutional mechanism for organizing supplies of smallholders also need to be integrated with a formal mechanism like FPOs to reap the synergies in production and marketing.