Paddy farmers in Ramankari village used to raise a second crop (
Varsha crop) in addition to the traditional summer crop (
puncha crop) in their fields until three or four years back. Compared to the puncha cropper acre yield of paddy during the varsha crop season had been considerably lesser and it is more vulnerable to crop failures due to floods. Generally local farmers believe that keeping their lands fallow during the autumn and winter seasons will enhance the productivity of the crop during the summer season. The possibility of getting more profits with more consistency has induced local farmers to restrict their farming activities to the single season of puncha crop and at present in all of the padasekharams in the study area a single crop is raised annually. It has substantially reduced the gross cropped area under paddy. While a large section of the medium and large farmers in the study area are of the opinion that the raising of the
second crop is uneconomical, avast majority of the marginal farmers as well as the farm labourers believe that the second crop is also reasonably remunerative. According to them the decision of Padasekharam Committees to refrain from attempting a second crop is influenced by the opinion of rich and influential farmers who have other major sources of income. In this background we attempt to examine the profitability of the crop in the study area harvested during the summer months from February to May 2001. In order to estimate cost of cultivation
of important crops in Kerala, the Department of Economics and Statistics has
used three cost concepts viz, Cost A, Cost Band Cost C. Cost A consists of cash and kind expenses (paid out costs) actually incurred by the cultivators. Cost B consists of Cost A and interest on fixed assets including land and Cost C is taken as the sum of Cost Band the imputed value of family labour. In the present study cost of cultivation of paddy crop is estimated as the
sum total of material costs, labour costs and miscellaneous
expenses such as land lax, cost of repairing equipments etc. Per acre gross profit of the crop is calculated as the difference between paid out costs and value of the product. In order to workout net profits interest on working capital is added to paid out costs and the sum is deducted from the value of output GOK (1991):
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