INTRODUCTION:

India is an agricultural country. Most of the developing countries today are in the throes of a technological revolution in the field of agriculture. The new farm technologies introduced in this country during the mid sixties of the last century. India is a progressive country. There are many advancing things making progress today. Agricultural economy plays a vital role in the economic development of India. Past experience of the developed countries as well as that of the developing ones, confirms that faster growth in agricultural production was necessary for economic development of India too. In a country where sizeble proportion of the population is dependent on agriculture, the development of agricultural sector is prerequisite. Continuous increase in agricultural production was possible by the extension of area under cultivation, through reclamation of waste lands and by increasing productivity of land’.¹

The agriculture sector has a direct impact on the level of farm income as well as national income of the country. Therefore, it has become a need to increase agricultural production. There are two feasible options especially to increase the agricultural production. The first possibility was to cultivate normal soils through optimal allocation of available resources and to utilise the full potential of existing technology. The second possibility was through external land augmentation without shrinking of the area and productivity of any activity. The farm management picture in India shows a greater change as a result of the green revolution. The introduction of HYV seeds and the greater emphasis on the development of minor irrigation works, greater use of fertilizers and pesticides had opened new possibilities and opportunities for the farmers to improve their farm productivity and increase the level of farms income.

Meaning of Farm:

Farm means a piece of land where crops and livestock enterprises was taken up under common management and has specific boundaries. A farm is a socio-economic unit which not only provides income or profit to a farmer but also a source of happiness to him and his family. It is also a decision making unit where the farmer has many alternatives for his resources in the production of crops and livestock enterprise and their disposal. Hence, the farms were the micro units of vital importance which represents the centre of dynamic decision making in regard to guiding the farm resources in the production process. The economic prosperity of a country depends, largely on the viability and the use of the right amount and proportion of various ingredients of a farm unit-land, labour, livestock, implements, machinery, buildings and other capital resources and managerial ability. Farms was classified as Ranching, Dry and Irrigated farming, Mixed farming, Single crop and Multi crop farming and Diversified farming.

Meaning of Mixed Farming:

Mixed farming was a combination of two independent agricultural enterprises on the same farm. A typical case of mixed farming was the combination of crop enterprise with dairy farming or in more general terms, crop cultivation with livestock rearing, mixed farming may be treated as a special case of diversified farming. This particular combination of enterprises support each other and add to the farmer’s profitability.

Meaning of Resource Use:

A farmer can make intelligent decisions on the use of his inputs for profit maximisation if information on the relative efficiencies of his resources like fertilizers, seed, irrigation water, machinery, labour and the like which can be added to a hectare of land. Hence, a concern of the efficiency of resources would guide him to determine the amount of a resources to be used with one hectare of land to attain the expected level of production under the given resource situations.

The rational allocation of land among different crop enterprises was matter of crucial importance both from the point of view of increasing income of the farmer and increasing agricultural production of the country. With the introduction of high yielding and short duration varieties of crops, the study of cropping pattern and resource use was assumed with special significance in shaping agricultural production programme in the country. During the last decade, many changes had taken place in the technological, biological and economic factors that had a determining influence in shaping the crop pattern in different regions. Naturally, these changes warrant adjustments in the existing cropping patterns. However, the change which was introduced depends on the opportunity available in each region, the profitability of suggested changes and the practicability of implementing them from farmer’s point of view. In some regions, the scope for any appreciable changes may be limited. Similarly, the scope for change may vary on farms of different size groups or even from farm to farm in the same size group depending upon the availability of production resources.

Ngowi et al. (2007) studied pesticide use by smallholder farmers in Northern Tanzania who grew vegetables that include tomatoes, cabbages and onions. They observed that the types of pesticides used by the farmers in the study areas was insecticides (59 per cent), fungicides (29 per cent) and herbicides (10 per cent) with the remaining two per cent being rodenticide. More than 50 per cent of the respondents applied pesticides up to five times or more per cropping season depending upon the crop. Insecticides and fungicides was routinely applied by 77 and 7 per cent, respectively. Majority of the farmers reported that the trend of pesticide use was increasing. Sixty-eight per cent of farmers reported having fallen sick after routine application of pesticides.

Shakirullah et al. (2006) studied the nature and extent of adoption of pesticides among small, medium and large farmers in Union Council Palosi, District Peshawar. The results revealed that the Pesticides was used by 78.75 per cent of the farmers, while 2.25 per cent did not use them. Majority of the farmers (41.25 per cent) started using pesticides 6-15 years ago for different pests. The per annum average cost of pesticide purchase was significantly higher at 1 per cent level for large farmers than medium and small farmers. This showed that the larger farms applied more pesticides.

Bienkowski (2005) conducted a study on multi-criteria toxicity index for the assessment of pesticide impact on the environment in different types of farms. The extent of pesticide use and the impact of pesticides on the environment was surveyed in 30 farms representing three farm types (milk production, pig production and crop production) in Poland during 2002-03. Farms forcrop production recorded the use of 1.77 kg i.e., pesticide/ha. Whereas farms specializing in pig production used 1.28 kg i.e., pesticides/ha, and dairy farms used 1.04 kg i.e., pesticides/ha. Multi-criteria index of pesticide impact on the environment was -27.9 in dairy farms, -21.8 in crop production farms and -20.9 in pig production farms.

OBJECTIVES:

The level of productivity for different resource use on different size farms in Madathukulam block of Tiruppur District.

METHODOLOGY:

A three stage stratified random sampling technique was adopted to select the block, villages and cultivators of Madathukulam block in Tiruppur district. This district was newly formed by the Government of Tamil Nadu on October 2008 and was curved out of Coimbatore and Erode districts. This district is 5186.42 Sq.km was the radius and it has a population of 2471222 according to the census of 2011. Two hundred and seventy three villages come under Tiruppur district. All the villages of the district mainly depend upon the agriculture sector.

Structure of Farms:

Farm was the final or ultimate unit of enquiry in this study, which covers 250 such units spread over in 10 villages of a block in the district. The term ‘farm’ denotes the area actually cultivated (including current fallow) by a farmer and his family irrespective of the title of ownership and location.

Size of Farm:

Physical size of the farm unit is the important factor in the study of farm organization and management. The following table shows the number of sample farms, total cultivated area and the average size of farms by size group wise for the study year 2010-2011.

Table 1: Number of Farms, Cultivated Area and Average Size of Farms of the Study Area

SI. No	Size Group (in hectare)	No of Farms	Cultivated Area (in hectare)	Size of Holding (in hectare)	Percent of Farms Total	Percent of Average Size Holding
1	Marginal (0-1)	59	40.34	0.68	23.60	2.82
2	Small (1-2)	89	145.78	1.63	35.60	6.76
3	Semi-Medium (2-4)	65	193.30	2.97	26.00	12.32
4	Medium (4-10)	26	173.56	6.67	10.40	27.65
5	Large (10 and above)	11	133.91	12.17	4.40	50.45
Total		250	686.89	24.12	100.00	100.00
Average		-	-	2.74	-

Source: Primary Data

Table 2:Cropping Pattern (area in hectares)

SI. No	Crops / Season	Marginal (0-1)	Small (1-2)	Semi- Medium (2-4)	Medium (4-10)	Large (10 and above)	Average
Kharif Crop
1	Sugarcane	12.22	60.52	67.75	68.68	49.73	258.90
Other Kharif Crops
2	Paddy	13.80	37.16	43.48	29.07	36.36	159.87
3	Maize	10.40	29.68	22.14	10.50	6.06	78.78
4	Fodder	-	-	3.45	-	-	3.45
5	Others	1.68	7.21	35.00	50.88	35.96	130.73
6	Sub Total	25.88	74.05	104.07	90.45	78.38	372.83
Rabi Crops
7	Maize	6.20	15.86	36.27	15.34	21.00	94.67
8	Fodder	15.20	38.48	24.14	14.13	7.27	99.22
9	Onion	1.80	4.42	13.68	6.45	-	26.35
10	Tomato	-	2.00	1.20	2.42	-	5.62
11	Groundnut	0.40	3.61	3.21	3.23	-	10.45
12	Others	-	-	-	-	-	-
13	Sub Total	23.60	64.37	78.50	41.57	28.27	236.31
Total of Items (1+6+13)		61.70	198.94	250.32	200.70	156.38	868.04

Source: Computed Data

Table:3 Percentage Share of Area Sown Under Different Crops (area in hectares)

SI. No	Crops / Season	Marginal (0-1)	Small (1-2)	Semi- Medium (2-4)	Medium (4-10)	Large (10 and above)	Average
Kharif Crop
1	Sugar cane	19.80	30.43	27.08	34.23	31.80	29.83
Other Kharif Crops
2	Paddy	22.36	18.67	17.36	14.48	23.25	18.41
3	Maize	16.85	14.91	8.84	5.23	3.87	9.08
4	Fodder	0.02	0.02	1.38	-	0.01	0.39
5	Others	2.72	3.62	13.99	25.35	22.99	15.07
6	Sub Total	41.95	37.22	41.57	45.06	50.12	42.95
Rabi Crops
7	Maize	10.04	7.97	14.48	7.64	13.42	10.90
8	Fodder	24.63	19.34	9.64	7.04	4.64	11.43
9	Onion	2.91	2.22	5.46	3.21	-	3.03
10	Tomato	-	1.00	0.47	1.20	-	0.64
11	Groundnut	0.64	1.81	1.28	1.60	-	1.20
12	Others	0.03	0.01	0.02	0.02	0.02	0.02
13	Sub Total	38.25	32.35	31.35	20.71	18.08	27.22
Total of Items (1+6+13)		100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00

Source: Computed Data

A size group wise examination shows that the percentage area under Sugarcane rises with the increase in size of farms. A similar trend was noticed in case of maize and Kharif fodders while no such trend was noticed in Paddy crop. The big farmers having better resources at their end had sown larger area under Sugarcane and Maize crops. The reason for larger area under Paddy crops on big farms. It may thus be concluded that Sugarcane, Maize, Paddy and Fodder crops was the only four crops which are being grown by the farmers on large scale. Sugarcane crop fulfils the need of cash Maize and Paddy crops as food grains for family consumption and Fodder crops for the use of milch and draft cattle.

Area under Cash, Food and Fodder Crops

A comparative picture of the season wise area under cash, food and fodder crops was presented in the Table 4.11(A) and 4.11(B). The Table 4.11(A) shows that the area under food crops was highest being 365.29 hectares followed by cash crops 269.35 hectares in Kharif and Rabi total of 868.04 hectares. The area under food crops was higher in Kharif season as compared to Rabi season. In case of cash crops the area was highest in Kharif season due to Sugarcane. The area under fodder crop was 102.67 hectares of which 3.45 hectares were in Kharif season.

Coming to the percentage contribution, it was seen from Table 4.11(B) that food crops occupied 42.08 per cent, cash crops 31.03 per cent and fodder crops 11.82 per cent area to total cropped area of Kharif and Rabi season combined of the total area. Kharif season shared for 72.77 per cent and that of Rabi 27.23 per cent. As regards food crops occupied 14.59 per cent in Rabi season and 27.49 per cent in Kharif season. The area under cash crops was highest being 29.82 per cent in Kharif season due to sowing of Sugarcane while it was 1.21 per cent in Rabi season. The area under fodder crops was lower being 0.39 per cent in kharif as compared to Rabi 11.43 per cent.

CONCLUSION:

The stages of agricultural development i.e., traditional intermediate or modern in the study area would be worthwhile to consider the distinction among them. A traditional stage implied a way of living rather than a business proposition where production was subsistence oriented. The produce being mainly intended for family consumption. The input used in such situation i.e., crop varieties, seed, labour, fertilizer etc., was chosen mainly on the basis of what the farmer and his family likes and owns. In these circumstances, there was very little of market orientation or consequences of prices cost and returns. At the other extreme, a modern agriculture would imply careful selection of enterprises, crop varieties, fertilizers and pesticides by procuring them largely from the market. The bulk of the produce in such a case has to be sold in the market at a profit in order to obtain cash needed for purchasing inputs from the market. In modern agriculture, necessarily there was evidence of selectivity and careful decision making.

REFERENCE:

1. Bhardwaj A.N Swarup R and A.L Nadda (1980), Resource Use Efficiency and Maize: A Comparative Study of HYVs and Local Varieties in District Bilaspur (H.P), Agro-Economic page Research Centre, Himachal Pradesh University, Simla, PP.1.

Received on 04.11.2014 Modified on 19.12.2014

Res. J. Pharmacognosy & Phytochem. 7(2): April-June 2015; Page 91-94

DOI: 10.5958/0975-4385.2015.00015.1