Economics of Farming Systems in Marathwada Region of Maharashtra State

It is essential that farmers should adopt different farming systems or subsidiary enterprises like diary, poultry, horticulture, goat farming, sericulture, fishery etc. in their crop production programme for generation of regular and evenly distributed income throughout the year. These subsidiary occupations have also potential to provide regular and continuous self-employment throughout the year. The only way to increase agricultural production is to increase productivity per unit area per unit time. A judicious mix of agricultural enterprises like dairy, poultry, fishery, agro-forestry, agro-horticulture, sericulture etc. suited to the given agro-climate conditions and socio-economic status of the farmers, would bring prosperity in the farming. Four farming systems viz., crop + dairy, crop + fruit, crop + goatery and crop + sericulture were predominant in studied districts. With regards to economics of various farming system revealed that higher income was obtained from crop + fruit farming system followed by crop + dairy, crop + dairy, crop + goatery and crop + sericulture farming system.