Comparative cost and returns of tractor owned and hired farms in Tungabhadra project (TBP) area of Karnataka, India

Abstract

Mechanization saves time in completing different operations, which gives the crop more time to mature, allows the farmer to be more flexible in his farming operations and facilitates multi cropping. At present in India, trac-tors are being used for tillage on about 22.78 per cent of the total land area and sowing about 21.30 per cent of total area. Custom hiring service (CHS) is a popular method of gaining short-term control of farm machineries. The CHS gained importance mainly due to rise in the cropping intensity and drop in average landholdings. The productivity of major crops is higher on the tractor owning farms due to timely and sufficient availability of tractor services and 61.67 per cent of large farmers and 11.67 per cent of medium farmers own tractors. The net farm income is higher on tractor owning farms but input costs are low on custom hiring farms. It may be due to the high fixed costs and variable costs on tractor owning farms. The tractor charge was relatively same for all tractor drawn implements, it was ranging from `135.15/h to `142.11/h. The cost incurred was highest for rotavator (`574.93/h) followed by cage wheel puddler (`491.58/h) and MB plough (`462.58/h).The small and medium tractor hiring farms earned more net income. This shows that it is better for smaller farms to hire tractor services rather to have their own tractor CHS would constitute a reliable tool for implementing specific farming practices and obtaining a reasonable income.