Economics Farming System in Meerut District of Western Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

. In a pred~mi~ant agricul~ral. economy lndia,s livestock is the integral component. Crop produCtion along With hve stock reanng ts the most important economic activity in ruraJ areas. These two complementary enterprises provide additional income and employment to the majority of the rural population. Mixed farming systems enable a full utiliz~tion of the byproducts of another to enhance the efficiency of each other. Live stock sector is considered as a sunrise enterprise of Indian economy and it is hoped to serve as ~.n engine of growth to the agriculture sector in the coming times. Besides that n1ajority of fanners are resource poor from fmancial as well as technical point of view. Consequently their resource use capabilities are also poor. Their fanning activities remained by and large subsistence guided by household food security objective. In view of this present study entitled on ''Economics of fanning system in Meerut district of western Uttar Pradesh" has been undertaken with the following objectives: 1. To know the socioeconomic profJ.le of the sample households. 2. To identify the various fanning systems in the study area. 3. To work out the cost and returns and comparison of major farming systems prevailing in the study area.Western Uttar Pradesh consists of 17 districts. One district ~'as selected purposively for the present investigation. Meel·ut district has 12 community development blocks~ out of ~rhic.h one block was selected randomly, the lists of all the villages were obtained from the block head quarter. Total four viBages were selected randon,ly, m•o were near the market, whereas the other two away from the market randomly away from the put~ca roads and in the interior area. The households were then classified into four c~tegories viz. Marginal , Small, Medium and Large Farmers. Finally a sample of 60 households having with at least nvo milch animals was selected on the basis of probability proportion to their population. Tabular analysis of data was done to estimate cost and returns for various crops and livestock. Simple statistical tools like arithmetic & weighted average and percentage \Vas used for the analysis of the data. From the analysis it was observed that marginal and small farmers constitute of largest group (78.25percent) of farming community and owned only 32.4 percent land in the study area. The average size of operational holding is 1.33 hfctare. The per hectare net income from wheat, paddy and sugarcane was Rs 7228, 36647 & 63764 respe•~tively v.'hile per lactation income from CO\V and buffalo was Rs 2903 7 and 12003. The overall net income from sugarcane + dairy based farming system was Rs. 104804 willie the average selected household and net income of wheat + paddy + dairy based farming system is Rs. 84915. The sugarcane+ dairy bas.cd farming system ~omparatively giving hig~er income by Rs. 19879 higher than the paddy +wheat+ hvestock based farmmg system. Therefore) 'Vlth this study it has been found that the sugarcane based farrrting system was better than t pa y + \Vheat based ':' · g system. in the selected area to the household.