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ThesisItem Open Access ASSESSMENT OF TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF NATURAL FARMING IN SUB-TROPICAL REGION OF HIMACHAL PRADESH(UHF,NAUNI, 2024-02-12) Chinglembi Laishram; Subhash SharmaPresent study “assessment of technical efficiency of natural farming in sub-tropical region of Himachal Pradesh” was carried out in Nalagarh, Ghumarwin, Una and Sundarnagar blocks by taking representative sample of 320 farmers through multistage random sampling having 80 farmers from each block. The average family size was 5.22. Of these, 47.42 per cent were men, 38.72 per cent were females, and 13.85 per cent were children. The literacy rate exhibited variation ranging from 87.13 to 89.10 per cent among different farm categories, with an overall average of 88.30 per cent. The overall literacy index was recorded as 2.70. 78.02 per cent of the studied households were involved in agricultural activities, while 13.48 per cent were engaged in services and 8.50 per cent were involved in business. The dependency ratio w.r.t family size was 0.30 which indicated that on an average one worker has to support less than one family member. The average number of agricultural workers was 3.19. The overall average land holding in the study region was observed to be 1.82 hectares. At an overall level, the total cultivated area accounted for 67.41 per cent, with 32.13 per cent allocated to natural farming and 31.08 per cent dedicated to conventional agricultural practices. The study region encompasses four primary crop combinations, namely: Vegetables, Cereal + Pulses + Vegetables, Cereal + Pulses, and Cereal + Pulses + Oilseed + Vegetables under natural farming system. The main crops cultivated under the Conventional Farming (CF) system for vegetable crops include cucumber, okra, French beans, potato, pea, and cauliflower and for cereal crop consist of maize and wheat. The primary pulses crops cultivated was Black-gram, Soyabean, and Chick-pea. The primary crops cultivated within the Oilseeds category comprise Sesame and Mustard. The Relative Economic Efficiency (REE) was highest in all the crop combination. When comparing natural farming to conventional farming, natural farming resulted in lower carbon equivalent emissions than conventional farming in all the crop combinations.The Stochastic frontier production function approach was used to technical efficiency in different farm category in the study area and was observed that the coefficients of Jivamrit, Bijamrit, Ghanjivamrit, Agniastra, Neemastra and Bramastra were positive and statistically significant at 1, 5 and 10 per cent level, respectively. Individuals in the treated group conserve Rs. 8189.62 more on average than those who are in the control group. The major problem faced by the farmers in different farm categories was non availability of specialized market, labour intensiveness, inadequate training facilities, non-remunerative prices for produce, etc.