Economic Analysis Of Technical Efficiency Of Paddy Crop Cultivation In Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Paddy is the widely consumed staple food for a large part of the world human population, especially in Asia. Rice is one of the three major crops in the world among the maize and wheat. Paddy is grown in an area of 47.60 Million hectares with a production and productivity of 1367 Lakh Million tonnes and 2390 kg hectare in 2023-2024 in India. In Andhra Pradesh, paddy is grown in an area of 58.75 Million hectare with production of 128.95Million tonnes and productivity of 2385 kgs per hectare respectively. The efficiency in production is a can be increased by using good technology along with better management of resources, available at the farmer s disposal. To increase the productivity the resources/ inputs have to be efficiently used which otherwise leads to inefficiency/ inability to produce maximum possible output even if the given level of inputs is made available. The present study was taken up with an objective to calculate the farm level technical efficiency and yield gap of paddy production in Andhra Pradesh. The rice farmers however face several problems besides water scarcity, stagnating yield, declining profit, less land, and labour for rice cultivation, crop failures due to adverse weather and growing environmental concerns. In an agrarian country like India, intensified efforts to improve both crop and water productivity and the farmers income is a vital need of the hour. Besides inefficiency in resource use, the yield also stagnated in many parts of rice growing regions in India. There is little scope to increase in the area. Hence increase in production and productivity with an improvement in efficiency of production through farm technology is necessary to meet the growing demand. On the other hand, despite the widespread use of efficiency measures in Indian rice farms, only a handful of these studies have examined the same across size groups and agro-ecological regions (zones) at the same time. Furthermore, there is little agreement among the studies available on the age-old topic about efficiency disparities between small and large farms. Previously, it was thought that due of the increased cost of hired labour, output per hectare on large farms was lower when using traditional labour-intensive equipment. Nonetheless, the gradual adoption of technology has opened up new productivity potential for vast farms.