Economic Analysis of Wheat Produccation in Meerut District of Western Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Wheat is one of the most important food crops grown in the world India 's position in the world wheat scenario is concerned, it ranked second after China. India accounted for about 12.29 per cent of the world acreage under wheat and aboutll. 77 per cent its pr'?duction. Its production has increased substantially from 6.46 million tonnes in the year 1950-51 to 87.42 million tonnes in the year 2011-12 and contribution to the total food grain production has increased from 18 per cent to about 34 per cent during the same period In India, . Ullar Pradesh producing 30.0 million tonnes of wheat ji·om the 9. 64 million hectare area with productivity of 3.11 tonnes per hectare during 2011- 12, stands on firs/ rank in the production. Among different agro climatic zones, Western Uttar Pradesh is the leading producer of wheat withl0.9Imillion tonnes during the year 2011-12 and contributed to be 36.36 percent in the total production of Uttar Pradesh. The crux of the problem of increasing agricultural production in any area is to increase the output per unit of input. The cost of cultivation is an important economic indicator being taken by I he government of India while fixing procurements and minimum suppon prices for various agricultural commodities. But, wide variations have been noticed in the cost of cultivation of crops, which varies from region to region and even from farmer to farmer of given regions. The study of cost and returns provide the idea of profitability and could be a yard stick to planners and po/ic)' maker~ The present study was allempt on "Economic analysis of Wheat Production in A1eerut District of Western Uttar Pradesh" with the following objectives (i) To :lnow the socio economic profile of the sample household (ii) To work out the cost~ and returns of Wheal production for different size group of farms. (iii) To identifj the .'vlarketing channel and work out price spread of wheat on different size group offarms. From the purposely selected district than block(j 011 the basis of highest area and production under the crop, four villages wer:: selected randomly from the selected blocks, a complete list of the farmer were prt;pared and then categorized into four categories i.e. marginal, small, medium and iarge on the basis of size of holding. From the total wheat growers, I 00 respondents were selected in probability proportion from their population, for the col/e.:tion of data. Suitable statistical tools were employed to meet the objective. The major socio economic factor identified were family size, monthly income, size of holding, education level, cropping pattern and farm assets. The condition of large farmer found better than to other categ01y farmers because of more holding size, highly qualified, more assets and more number of income sources, than that of medium following by small and marginal. The cost of cultivation of wheat was amounted to be Rs. 52965 per hectare, and the share of variable and fixed cost was 50.91 percent 6.24 percent. Among the variable cost highest expenditure was observed on human .'abour !9.08 percent, rental value of land alone accounted about 34 percent of the total cost. The total cost of cultivation was found positive relationship. Contribution of cost A ·was 51.93 percent to total cost. cost A2. B1. B2. C1 and C2 were found in'lersely related with size of farm. The average yield and benefit-cost ratio was found ro be 41.72 quintal/hectare and 1.14. The benefit-cost ratio was highest 1.18 for the large farmers and lowest 1.13 for the marginal. The five marketing ~hannel of wheat were identified and among these fifth channel was observed to be more efficient because the producer share in consumer rupees was highest in channel 5111 (J6. 88 percent) followed by channel 1st (95.38 percent), channell11 (80. 79 percent), channel 2"d (80.00 percent) and channel 3rd (74.30 percent). The study price spread was [ou11d to be lowest (Rs.40.00) in channel51h and highest/or channel 3rd (Rs.4J.-i.OO). It means as decrease the number of middleman from the marketing, mt.wketing eJnciency will improve and vice-versa