Cost and Returns of Cotton Cultivation with Special Reference to Pesticide Usage in Dharwad District of Karnataka

摘要

Large scale and indiscriminate use of pesticidesincrease the cost of production.Cotton is one among such crops where farmers try to gain more returns by excess use of pesticides.This paper is focused on cost and returns of cotton with special reference to pesticide use under different farm size groups in Dharwad district ofKarnataka.Multistage sampling technique was used for collecting the primary data from a sample of 120 cotton growing farmers.The total cost incurred by large farmers was high (Rs.52,865.37/ha) as compared to medium and small farmers (Rs. 51,574.65^a and Rs. 50,766.27/ha).The net returns per hectare obtained by large fanners was high (Rs.42,825.52/ha) as compared to medium and small farmers (Rs.40,299.60/ha and Rs.39,384.04/ha respectively).The pesticide shared 9.76 per cent of the total cost of cultivation of cotton. It was noticed that the expenditure on pesticide was highest for small farmers (Rs. 5192.61/ha) as compared to large (Rs.5019.49/ ha) andmediumfarmers(Rs. 4,947.93/ha). The cotton yield was highest in case of large farmers being 17.90 q per ha as compared to medium (17.55 q/ha) and small farmers( 17.37 q/ha). Returns per rupee investment was highest for large farmers i.e. 1.81 as compared to medium and small farmersi.e. 1.78 and 1.77 respectively. The cost of pesticides was around Rs. 4500- Rs.5000 for about 45 per cent of the sample farmers.