Sustainability of Agriculture in Vidarbha Region of Maharashtra
2013
Borkar, Prema
This study has measured the sustainability of agriculture in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and has identifed the factors responsible for this sustainability. The sustainability was measured by developing a Sustainability Index of Vidarbha region with the help of various indicators of sustainability. The study is based on the secondary data collected from various government publications for the period 1980–81 to 2011–12. The data for computation of indicators of cost-benefit ratio for selected crops were adopted from the records of Agricultural Prices Cell (APC), Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth, Akola. The study was limited to principal crops, namely cotton, kharif-jowar, soybean, tur, gram and sunflower cultivated in the Nagpur district of Vidarbha. The study has shown that the sustainability index, developed through principal component analysis, depicted a declining trend over the years. Therefore, it was concluded that the Vidarbha agriculture was tending towards un-sustainability. The study has also found that the productivities per hectare of cotton, tur, kharif-jowar, sunflower and gram; gap in gross returns in cotton, kharif-jowar and gram, cost-benefit ratio of cotton, kharif-jowar and gram, parity index of kharif jowar and gram, availability of land per farmer, ratio of irrigated land to irrigable land, per capita production of foodgrains, ratio of agricultural population to total population, area under high-yielding varieties and rainfall were the significant variables contributing to agricultural sustainability in the Vidarbha region.
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