Resource Allocation Efficiency of Wheat in Western Maharashtra

Agriculture is the most important sector of Indian economy. Agriculture sector employs more than 58 per cent of population and contribute 14.3 per cent of GDP in economy during the 2010-11. The key issue of this sector in the Maharashtra State is low productivity in foodgrains as compared to national and inters state productivity. Limited availability of agricultural land, quality of land and rainfed agriculture has restricted the scope for increase in agricultural production. The objectives of the study were to examine the per hectare changes in resource use levels and their efficiency in selected cereals and to estimate the per hectare changes in costs and returns structure of selected crops. The emphasis has been given on the simple tabular analysis based on means, percentages. The zonewise cross sectional data of two point of time i.e. 1991-92 and 2008-09 were used for estimating the resource use efficiency. The results indicated that the per cent change in per hectare resource use for wheat at overall level was highly significant in case of P and K fertilizer ingredients. At overall level the per hectare resource use gap analysis showed that the per cent gap in use of seed for wheat crop was found to be negative indicating the excess use and per cent gap for manure, N, P and K fertilizers were decreased over a period of 18 year. During 1991-92 and 2008-09, at the overall level the independent variables like human labour, N and P fertilizers were found positively significant and bullock labour and N fertilizers were observed to be significant, respectively. At the overall level, marginal value product shown that human labour, N and P fertilizers and bullock labour and N fertilizers during 1991-92 and 2008-09 was higher than the unit costs, respectively. At the overall level the per hectare total cost of cultivation i.e. Cost 'C' and gross profit were observed to be increased by 267.50 and 94.21 per cent over the base year, respectively. The B:C ratio of wheat during the year 1991-92 was greater than unity but during the year 2008-09 shown less than unity, it means this crop was in loss.