Identification And Economic Analysis Of Small Farmers

The primary focus of the present work is to identify the ?viable? small farmers. A number of alternative approaches to identify the small farmers have been suggested by various researchers in the country. In the present work ?minimum farm family requirement expenditure? concept has been adopted. Expenditure on recommended level of fooding, expenditure on housing, clothing, lighting, medicine, education and miscellaneous items are the constituents of family requirement. In other words, it is the cost of living of an average standard family at recommended and standard level. in addition to these, the cost of maintenance of a pair of bullocks which is indispensable for a farm is included to work out the minimum farm family requirement expenditure. A standard family is considered to be consisting of four adult units (farmer, his wife and three minor children). Then with the help of regression analysis and parametric programming, the acreage required to yield this minimum farm business income is derived. The farmers who have less than this sixe of holding or unable to earn minimum required business income are termed or defined as ?non-viable small farmers.? The work suggests that land required to earn this expenditure at existing technology can be reduced in available farm resources are used optimally. This size can further be reduced if credit facilities are provided to these farmers. Dairy enterprise augemented the income of the sample farmers, Thus, maintenance of a few milching animals specially buffaloes will enable a farmer with still lower size to become viable. Thus, optimal allocation of resources, credit facilities and maintenance of a few buffaloes will augement the farm income of a farmer. These three factors in association will reduce the required size in comparison to requirement at existing technology to become a farmer viable.