Socio-economic Impact of Custom Hiring Centres on Farmers in Haryana

Custom Hiring Centres of agricultural machinery are very helpful for the farming community to increase the net income of the farmers by way of reducing the cost of cultivation at each and every stage of crop growth in a timely manner. From a socio-economic perspective, the different farm implements such as transplanter, multi-crop thresher, combine harvester and baler had been bought by the custom hiring centre owners as additional equipment on need-based through the income generation by operating the custom hiring centres. Further, it has been noted that custom hiring centres play an important role in water conservation strategies, developmental, sustainability and environmental issues. The study was conducted in wet and dry agro-climatic zones of Haryana on sixty custom hiring centes. It was found that overwhelming majority of the farmers (87.67%) increased the size of contractual landholding after the adoption of custom hiring centres. Majority of the farmers were also saving the seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. As per study, the farmers (61.67%) were also facing the problem of the high cost of farm implements followed by lack of service and maintenance support for machinery (56.67%) and non-availability of machines at peak times in the rabi and kharif seasons (50.00%). It was also suggested that people should be encouraged to adopt custom hiring centres and reduce the production cost.