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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

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20201
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Subject: Agricultural Economics × Author: C. R, Bhuvana × End date: 2020 × Thesis Type: M.Sc ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    An economic analysis of turmeric production in Nirmal district of Telangana
    (DRPCAU, Pusa, 2020) C. R, Bhuvana; Mishra, R. R.
    The current research work was conducted to analyze the resource use efficiency of turmeric farmers in Nirmal district of Telangana. Input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) under the assumption of constant returns to scale (CRS) was applied to estimate the Technical Efficiency (TE), Allocative Efficiency (AE) and Cost Efficiency (CE) of turmeric production. Fifteen sample farmers were randomly selected from 8 villages under 2 blocks namely Mamda and Laxmanchanda within the district of Nirmal in the state of Telangana which made the total sample size to 120. The sample farms were analyzed together and then separately based on farm size where farmers with <2ac were marginal farmers and those with >2 -<5 ac were small farmers. The primary data required about input usage and output obtained was collected with the help of a pretested schedule. All the 120 farmers taken together operated at 0.51 mean technical efficiency indicating that they were almost using twice (49%) the optimal quantity of inputs to produce their existing levels of output. Marginal farmers had a mean score of 0.57 technical efficiency and small farmers had an average of 0.56 technical efficiency. Overall sample farmers operated at a 0.47 allocative efficiency signifying that the farmers were spending near to double (53% more) of the least cost combination level of the inputs at the given prices. With respect to marginal farmers the overall average AE score was 0.65 and in case of all small farmers was 0.48. Mean cost efficiency score of 120 farmers is 0.35, meaning that their cost of cultivation of turmeric can be driven down by 75% to produce the exact quantity as they were before. Overall cost efficiency of marginal farmers was 0.43 while the small farmers had an overall average CE of 0.30. An attempt was made to estimate and summarize the cost and return structure regarding turmeric cultivation in the study area. The primary data utilized for DEA was utilized here too. Along with cost and returns, human and machine labour analysis was assessed. The calculations were done first for the overall sample and then for marginal and small farmers separately. Variable costs and fixed costs concept were applied for cost computations. Gross returns, Net returns and benefit-cost ratio were calculated for returns analysis. Overall analysis revealed that, 93.41% of the total cost of production was variable cost and the remaining 6.59% was fixed costs. Among the different variable costs, planting material (36.29%), manures and fertilizers (15.18%) followed by interest on working capital (9.25%) were the top contributors to the total cost of production. Marginal farmers incurred on an average 1.13 lakhs of cost of production per acre. Out of this, the major shares were that of planting material (32.73%) and manures and fertilizers (17.06%) in variable costs and rental value of own land (5.48%) in fixed costs. Small farmer’s average cost of production was calculated to be 1.45 lakh per acre. Amidst this, variable costs occupied 94.31% and fixed costs occupied 5.69%. Planting material (42.04%) and manures and fertilizers (12.11%) were the major contributors to total cost among variable costs. Rental value of own land (4.03%) was the top contributor among fixed costs to the total cost of production. The analysis of overall sample farmers revealed that major labour usage was in the process of application of plant protection chemicals which was. This activity was responsible for 26.32% of the labour used on farm. Inter-cultural operations (20.82%) and harvesting (20.58%) followed. Marginal farmers and small farmers utilized human labour in the same pattern as the overall sample showed. Machine labour usage in all three cases of overall sample, marginal farmers and small farmers was almost identical. It was majorly for land preparation, irrigation and harvesting. Overall sample farmers obtained a gross return of 1.67 lakh per acre. They received on an average a net return of 0.36 lakh per acre. Their benefit -cost ratio was 1.27. Marginal farmers amassed a mean gross return of 1.69 lakh per acre, but the average net profit was just 0.48 lakh per acre. Their benefit-cost ratio was found to be 1.4. Small farmer’s gross average gross returns and net returns stood at 1.65 and 0.13 lakh per acre, respectively. Compound growth rates of area, production and productivity was analyzed for turmeric with respect to India and Telangana. For India, a time frame of 2000-2018 was adopted and divided into period I (2000-2009), period II (2010-2018) and Period III (2000-2018) for better understanding. For Telangana from 1980 to 2017 was considered as period I (1980-1998), period II (1999-2017) and period III (1980-2017). The secondary data was collected from various websites, government publications, articles etc. In India from 2000-2018 it was found that they were positive in periods one and three but negative in the second period. In case of Telangana they were always positive except in the case of area in second period. Constraint analysis was carried out with the help of primary data collected by utilizing Garrett’s Ranking Technique. This was done under different categories of problems such as production, financial, processing, infrastructural and market constraints. Climatic adversities ranked first in production constraints. Lack of insurance coverage had the most serious effect among financial constraints. Under processing constraints limitations faced by the farmers to enter and sell in international markets had the most detrimental effect. High transportation cost caused major problems among infrastructural constraints. Limited market information and exposure to international markets was the most important disadvantage in case of market constraints.