Levels, Pattern and Distribution of Income of Farmers in Rural Punjab: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

The present study examined the levels, pattern and distribution of income of farmers in rural Punjab. For this purpose, the primary data was collected from 510 farm households randomly from the selected villages from all the development blocks of the high, medium and low productivity regions during the period of 2015-16. The results of the study revealed that average household and per capita income increased with an increase in the farm size. The average household income of the large farm-size category was 9.94 and 6.31 times of the marginal and small farm-size categories, respectively. Farm business income was the largest source of income for all the farm-size categories followed by milk and milk products. The marginal and small farm-size categories have to work as labourers in agricultural and non-agricultural sector due to inadequate income from small landholdings, whereas the semi-medium, medium and large farm-size categories supplemented their income by hiring out agricultural machinery. The marginal and small farm-size categories earned 6.05 and 4.28 times less per capita income than the large farm-size category. The study showed the highly skewed distribution of per household and per capita income among farmers in the rural areas of Punjab.