Comparative economics of mechanical VIS-A-VIS manual harvesting of sugarcane in Latur district
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Date
2015-05-30
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Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Krishi Vidyapeeth, Parbhani
Abstract
Sugarcane (Saccharam officinaram) belongs to family gramineae, and is
one of the major commercial crops of India which is the homeland of sugarcane
cultivation. India is occupying about 4.41 million hectares area with an annual
sugarcane production of 300 million tonnes and productivity is 68.60 tonnes per
hectare. Whereas Maharashtra having second position in area and production of
sugarcane with 0.78 million hectares and 57.04 million tonnes production. Latur
is among one of the major district of Maharashtra where sugarcane was
cultivated on an area of 0.024 million hectares area sugarcane production was
1.84 million tonnes and productivity is 77.00 tonnes per hectare.
Mostly sugarcane in India was harvested manually. Due to shortage of
manual labour in the last few years, the harvesting of sugarcane was often
delayed, leading to low recovery of sugar from cane. The government of
Maharashtra state has thus decided to assist in the purchase of mechanical
sugarcane harvesters by individual producers, groups of farmers, or cooperative
sugar mills during current fiscal 2011-12. A single sugarcane harvester was
working 8 hours a day and covering 1 hectare of sugarcane fields. It will harvest
100 tonnes of sugarcane per day per harvester and 18,000 tonnes of sugarcane
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per season, in working 180 days a year. Day by day labour wages are increasing
and in the same way demand of agriculture products. Sugarcane harvesting is a
very labour intensive activity in which workers usually become fatigued after
manually cutting the cane for a few hours.
The study was centered on the comparative economics mechanical vs
manual harvesting method of sugarcane. The study will be useful for the farmer
in minimizing the cost and increasing the profit. The financing institution which
supplies the credit would get the information regarding the economic feasibility
of the method. Multistage sampling design was adopted in selection of district,
villages and sugarcane growers. In fust stage, Latur district was selected. In
Latur district, Vikas cooperative sugar factory was selected. Four villages from
sugar factory were selected. Sixty four sugarcane growers were selected and
were grouped in mechanical harvesting method of sugarcane growers and
manual harvesting method of sugarcane growers. The analytical techniques like
tabular analysisand frequency and percentage method were used to analyze the
data in the present study.
Investment on commonly used assets and irrigation structure was Rs.
4726.92 and Rs. 82834.76 on the mechanical harvesting method of sugarcane
farm while it was Rs. 4288.67and Rs. 80543.75 in manual harvesting method of
sugarcane farm observed. Gross return was found to be Rs. 283874.00, Cost-C
was Rs. 149592.12 and net profit was Rs. 134281.88 in mechanical harvesting
method of sugarcane farm, while in manual harvesting method of sugarcane farm
it was Rs. 254127, Rs. 151628.93 and Rs. 102498.57, respectively. Per tonnes
cost of production of sugarcane was higher as Rs. 1448.50 in manual harvesting
method as compare to Rs. 1219.17 in mechanical harvesting method of
sugarcane farm. The output-input ratios were 1.90 and 1.68 in mechanical
harvesting method and manual harvesting method of sugarcane production.
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