Thomascombi doc

Labour costs consists of the cost of human labour which includes the cost of hired human labour and imputed value of household labour and exchange labour, animal labour costs and costs of machine labour.
a. Human labour requirements and costs
In the study area household labour is not extensively used in paddy cultivation. Out of the 90 sample farmer households, it is found that in only 36 (40 percent) of them household members indulge in farming operations. The remaining 53 (percent) households are exclusively depending on hired labour to meet their labour requirements. For farming operations like the levelling and removal of weeds before sowing, construction and repair of inner bunds, transplantation and weeding daily wages are given to workers. Usually daily labourers work for six hours in a day and the amount of male and female labour days needed to perform the above operations in the study area are found to be 6.8 and 19.2 respectively per acre. At the time of our survey the prevailing daily wage rates for male and female labourers were Rs and Rs respectively. For farming operations like sowing, harvesting, manuring and plant protection works piece rates are given. The piece rate wages for the same activity vary from one locality to another locality in the same village and in the same locality itself it shows differences based on the size of the paddy landholdings and bargaining power of the farmers. During the last summer crop season the prevailing rates per acre in the study area were Rs 60 to
80 for sowing and Rs 70 to 90 for manuring. For spraying weedicides and insecticides the existing rates per container was Rs 8 to 12 and Rs 15 to 18 respectively. For harvesting one-eighths of the reaped crop is given as patham and one- fourths of patham is given as
theerpu. Together it amounts to 15.63 percent of the total harvest. In addition to normal wages, about 70 percent of the sample farmers in the study area used to give incentives to their workers in the forms of refreshments, conveyance charges etc, that amounted to 11 rupees per day per worker. All farmers on the basis of the size of area they cultivate share costs on the repair of ring bunds and dewatering. The padasekharam committee often appropriates production incentives and other subsidies provided to the farmers by the government and each farmer’s share of dewatering charges (nerma) and the cost of repairing ring bunds are adjusted against it. After deducting production bonus, paddy

farmers in the study area had to pay 200 to 400 rupees per acre as nerma during the last summer crop season. On an average the sample farmers of the study area had spent Rs 4307 per acre as human labour costs. It is found that more than 45 percent of the total human labour cost is incurred as harvesting charges. Another major human labour cost item is the cost of preparing fields for sowing which amounts to more than 20 percent of the total cost. Transplanting and weeding which are the other two major farming operations in paddy cultivation together accounts for nearly 22 percent of the total human labour costs. For other activities like the preparation of threshing yards ( kalam) and bringing in the reaped sheaves to kalam if the cultivating plots are not located in its close vicinity, farmers in the study area on an average spend nearly 175 rupees per acre. Average per acre human labour costs of the marginal, small, medium and large sample farmers are separately given in table 4.4, which shows that compared to other categories, marginal farmers in the study area spend lesser amounts as human labour costs.

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