Kulkarni, S.N.Thombre, Ramkishan Fakirrao2019-01-152019-01-152001-06-30T04004http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810090597Sugarcane plays an important role in the farmers as well as state's economy. Whenever, assured water is available to the farmer, his preference is for the cultivation of sugarcane crop because of it's remunerative prices and developed marketing system by the co-operative sugar factories. Sugarcane consumes more water than that of any other crops. Studies indicated that, there are some cropping systems which are more profitable (with less quantity of irrigation water) than that of sugarcane crop^ Hence, the present investigation to "Study on economics of alternative cropping system to sugarcane" was undertaken with the objectives TfBasmat taluka of Hingoli districtJ to identify predominant irrigated cropping systems in the selected area, to study input utilization of sugarcane and other- predominant cropping systems, to study the comparative economics of sugarcane with other predominant cropping systems and to examine the socio-economic conditions of the selected sample cultivators. The study has a reference year of 1998-99. The farmers were interviewed and data were collected with the help of specially developed questionnaire. Basmat taluka of Hingoli district and seven villages from this taluka were purposively selected on the basis of maximum area under sugarcane crop. Apart from sugarcane (sole crop), mung-jowar (rabi), cotton-groundnut (summer), soybean-wheat and jowar-wheat were identified as predominant cropping systems followed in the selected villages hence considered for the study. Five cultivators from each village for each selected cropping systems were finally selected making total sample size of 140 cultivators. Standard method for estimating input utilization and for findingout economics of selected cropping systems was followed. The results of study indicated that, maximum average size of holding of 7.39 ha was from sugarcane farmers with 35 per cent area under irrigation. There was no much variation within the different cropping systems in respect of intensity of cropping. As regards input utilization, the study revealed that cotton-groundnut (summer) found to be most labour intensive (306.67 human labour) cropping system as compared to other systems. This system was also required maximum bullock pairs (39.84/ha), use of FYM and plant protection measures over other selected cropping systems. As regards irrigations, sugarcane required 22.28 irrigations which was maximum in number as compared to cotton-groundnut (13.4 irrigations per ha). On the basis of net income, the study concluded that among different surveyed cropping systems, cottongroundnut (summer) cropping system was found to be most profitable and labour intensive than that of sugarcane (sole), mung-jowar (rabi), soybean-wheat, jowar-wheat cropping systems in the Basmat taluka of Hingoli district.ennullThesis