Dairy cooperatives that are mandated to be an instrument of rural development have transformed the rural economy in several parts of the country. The present investigation was carried out to study the performance of dairy cooperatives in Kashmir region. The study is based on secondary data collected from J&K Milk Producers Cooperative Limited. The performance of dairy cooperative societies (DCS) was assessed in relative terms using indexing technique. The results indicated that the physical and financial performance of most of the DCS was far from satisfactory, primarily due to reduced membership and hence, low level of milk procurement. Out of 344 DCS analysed in the study, only a handful of 15 DCS had registered moderate to good level of performance.

The study aims at examining the growth and instability of area, production and productivity and forecasting of area and production of Finger Millet crop in the state and India. The study is based on the time series data on area, production and productivity from 1984-85 to 2014-15. The study period was divided into two sub-periods coincides with the introduction Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) in 1997-98 i.e., period I (1984-85 to 1997-98) and period II (1999-00 to 2014-15). Thus, the total study period consists of 31 years. The growth rates in the area, production and productivity were calculated using compound growth rates. The trend lines showed an increase in both production and productivity in major ragi growing districts of Karnataka in both the periods, even though the showed area under the crop is decreasing. The analysis indicates that there was negative of growth in area and positive growth in productivity in all the major ragi growing districts of Karnataka in period I (1984-85 to 1997-98) and period II (1999-00 to 2014-15). The variability in production is attributed to declining in area and increase in productivity. The instability in the area, production and productivity were found to be more accelerated in period-II (1999-00 to 2014-15), compared to period-I (1984-85 to 1998-99). For forecasting ragi production, different linear and nonlinear growth models were explored. The forecasting results showed that, even though there was a deceleration in area, the production of ragi was increasing due to increase in productivity in the future time.

The study compared the status of market infrastructure across the selected regulated markets of Uttarakhand by market infrastructure development index computed for three categories viz., trade infrastructure, storage infrastructure and support infrastructure. Haldwani emerges as the best-equipped market as per the combined index (score of 0.62) and also outscores highest among the trade, storage and support infrastructural categories. Kashipur stands next in the category due to its better positioning in trade infrastructure while Dehradun scores low in the combined index due to poor trade and storage infrastructure despite standing second in the infrastructure support category. A positive and significant association was noticed between the commodity arrivals (potato and tomato) and market infrastructure categories. A panel regression analysis between potato arrivals, price, and market Dummies reveals that price has no time varying effect on the arrival of potato, but showed a significant and positive relationship between the markets and arrival reflecting the dependence of arrivals on market attributes.

This paper reviews the changing population profile of Nagaland by examining its size, growth and structure and also makes a comparative study among the districts. The study finds that the compound annual growth rate of population from 1901-2011 is 2.74%. The highest compound annual growth rate was recorded during 1951-61 with 5.66% and the lowest during 2001-2011 with -0.05%. Almost half of the population resides in three districts viz- Kohima, Dimapur and Mon constituting 46% of the total population. Nagaland recorded the highest growth rate in India during 1981-1991 and 1991-2001 with a decadal growth of 56.08% 64.53% which was not only highest in India but highest among the world and during 2001-2011 it recorded the lowest growth rate in India, in fact, it recorded a negative growth of -0.05%. During the last decade, 2001-2011 the state witnessed almost 12% increase in urban population, but the growth was mainly concentrated in Kohima and Dimapur districts. Literacy rate increased from 22 % to 80 % during 1961-2011, while sex ratio declined to 931 from 973 during 1901-2011.

This paper attempts to measure the factors responsible for the performance of cooperative sugar factories. In this study the three cooperative sugar factories are taken into consideration. It has been observed that in the study area, factors for becoming the member of sugar factories, are recovery percentage, remunerative price and correct weight. The study has provided enough evidence about the financial ratios which has shown the economic potentiality of the respective sugar factories. To improve cane procurement by sugar factories according to their fixed targets, the factory has to plan the programmes well before the start of the season, so that the installed capacity utilisation can be met. The government should come forward to help the farmers in making the cane bill payment at an early stage by the factories, by extending financial assistance, so that farmers can go for the purchase of inputs well in advance for sugarcane cultivation.

The present study has been made to work out the cost of cultivation, resource use efficiency, profitability and constraints of wheat and chickpea production in Vidisha district of Madhya Pradesh. The study is based on primary data, collected from 40 wheat and 40 chickpea cultivators in Vidisha district through interview schedule. The cost of cultivation of wheat was found higher (Rs. 28037.18/ha) in comparison to chickpea (Rs. 23899.00/ha). The variable cost was 57.86% and 55.46% of the total cost of wheat and chickpea cultivation, respectively. The Cost A1 was 56.87% and 55.15% of the total cost of wheat and chickpea, respectively. The family labour and seed have a positive and significant impact on the productivity of wheat. The only fertilizer has a positive and significant impact on the productivity of chickpea. The 0.554 and 0.616 return to scale from the cultivation of wheat and chickpea respectively shows decreasing return to level. The gross income, net income, farm business income, farm investment income, contribution margin, margin safety, break even point and benefit cost ratio of wheat were higher in comparison to chickpea. The benefit-cost ratio was higher in wheat (1:2.18) compared to chickpea (1:1.97).

The present study has been done in three hotspots areas of ornamental fish production and trade in India Viz. Kolkata (West Bengal), Chennai and Mumbai. The sociometric study revealed that the ornamental fishery is a male oriented activity in all the three study locations, but it holds as primary occupation only in case of Chennai. Moreover, it has been observed that the source of information was mainly from informal sources comprising of friends and relatives. Ornamental fisheries were primarily driven by own funding in all the three locations. Furthermore, the Pentagon diagram of the DFID model shows that all the five capital assets of Chennai are proportionately networked which is not such case of Kolkata (West Bengal) and Mumbai which revealed that the activity was more organized and coordinated in Chennai as compared to other two locations.

The present study was an attempt to estimate the profitability of Bt cotton seed production by farmers of Karnataka under contract farming. The total cost of Bt cotton seed production varied from one company contract farmers to other. The per acre total cost of seed production was higher (`96829) in case of contract farmers with JK Seeds Company followed by Monsanto seeds company farmers (`95797). The net returns received from Bt cotton seed production were higher in case of Monsanto seeds company contract farmers (`46387/acre) followed by Kaveri Seeds company (`33076/acre). While returns to per rupee of investment was highest (1.48) in the case of Monsanto Seed Company followed by JK Seeds Company (1.36). The Garret ranking test indicated that major constraint in seed production was non-availability of trained labour with a mean score of 72.24 followed by high wage rate (67.76). As contractual problems were concerned, poor technical assistance was the major constraint with a mean score of 69.44 closely followed by low contract price (67.34).

The present study examined livestock economy of Punjab. The growth rate was ranged between from -0.61 to 7.98 per cent per annum from the year 1997 to 2012 for different species of livestock in Punjab. The overall growth rate was found to be 3.27 per cent per annum for total livestock population in Punjab over the years. Though the decrease in livestock bovine population, the milk production in Punjab had increased from 3.22 to 9.71 million tonnes and per capita availability of milk increased from 541 to 961 gram per day with an impressive growth rate of 3.51 and 1.82% per annum from year 1980-81 to 2012-13. The milk production of India had reached up to 137.7 million tonnes during the year 2013-14. With the advancement of the livestock sector, the veterinary officers, insemination centers, and veterinary hospitals had also shown an overall growth rate of 0.65, 1.96 and 0.07 per cent per annum respectively from the year 1980-81 to 2012-13. The egg production in Punjab has also shown a positive trend over the years. The egg production in Punjab has increased from 2961.3 to 3724.6 million with an overall growth rate of 2.11 per cent per annum from the year 1980-81 to 2013-14. The % share of Punjab in the country is decreasing over the years with a negative growth rate of 3.29 per cent per annum. With increasing population and urbanization, the demand for goat and poultry meat is increasing over the years with an impressive growth rate of 1.09 per cent per annum from the year 1980-81 to 2013-14. The livestock sector has great potential for increasing income and employment and also reduces income inequality among rural farmers. The study has suggested that appropriate policy measures should be undertaken to strengthen veterinary services, marketing of livestock products and improving the breed of animals for developing a strong livestock economy of the state.

Fabric inspection is important for maintaining the quality of jute fabric. Traditional inspection process for jute fabric defects is human visual inspection which is insufficient and costly. The quality of inspection process for jute fabrics is mainly performed manually. Mostly defects could be detected by the most highly trained inspectors. Manual defect detection is labour intensive, cumbersome, prone to errors and expensive. At present, the fabric defect detection in the jute industry is performed manually. In jute industry improved performance in the inspection of fabrics leads to good product quality and contributes to increased profitability and customer satisfaction. Hence the automatic fabric defect inspection is required to reduce the cost and time waste caused by defects. Automated defect detection is less labour intensive, more accurate, efficient and less costly. The detection of defects of moving jute fabric on inspection table can be identified using Image processing techniques. These image processing techniques are applied and for the input image of a defective fabric frame by frame, conversion into grey scale image, noise filtering, binary image conversion, thresholding are applied on each image of video and the output is obtained in real time. In real time, output will be display the marks on defect area, defect percentage and defect concentration graph of capture length of fabric on inspection table

Preparing a inclusive policy to begin suitable changes in the working silhouette of the flood affected people in a vulnerable area seems to represent the major challenges of flood risk management. An effort has been made in this paper to examine the earnings under different livelihoods patterns of the flood prone area over three divergent sub-periods of floods. The study points out to the urgent need for livelihood enhancement in the study area. This is because of the fact that the overall current endowment of the factors of productions, distribution of productive assets and productive abilities are grossly out of alignment with what is needed in a flood prone area. The local rural economy is not in a position to automatically generate livelihoods for all those who seek it. Thus it is reasonable to infer that there exists a vast pool of surplus labour within the study area. The problem therefore is to mobilize sufficient investable capital through third party intervention to utilize the available surplus labour force in productive ventures.

The study on socio-economic profile of the common adopters of improved practices of crops and livestock enterprises was conducted in 13 purposively selected districts in North East region with 130 sample size from each adopted and non-adopted village. Data collection from the selected respondents was made with the help of pre-tested structured schedule through personal interview method. The study reveals that majority of the respondents in adopted villages belonged to middle age category and had low to medium level of education, single family type and medium size of family. They engaged farming as primary occupation and had operational land holding size above 3 hectares with income level ranging from ` 50,000.00 -100000.00. Most of the beneficiary farmers received medium level of trainings, mass media exposure and extension contact. While in case of non-beneficiary respondents, the study shows that majority respondents belonged to middle age category, possessed low education level and belonged to SC/ST caste with single family type and medium family size. Farming was the main occupation among the non-beneficiary respondents with average annual income less than ` 50,000.00 and were small farmers with operational land holding size ranging from 2-3 hectares. The study further indicates that majority of the respondents in non-adopted villages received medium intensity of trainings organised by different developmental organisations and agencies other than Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) and had medium level of mass media exposure and extension contact to acquire knowledge and skills related to different farming activities.

Present study was conducted in Bihar state to measure the performance of onion for this purpose 40 years secondary data were collected and compiled for period from 1974 to 2014. Decade wise as well as whole period analysis was done i.e. 1975-1984, 1985-1994, 1995-2004, 2005-2014 and 1975-2014. Results of the study shows that in the first decade onion gain the area at the compound growth rate of 1.7% per annum. The production of onion registered highest growth rate during this decade that was 2.9 %, despite an increase in productivity was at slow pace. During the second decade performance of the onion in area and production was much better than first decade but onion lost the productivity at the compound growth rate of 0.3% per annum. Onion in the third decade shows very poor performance and onion lost the area and production. Performance of onion was recorded much better and onion gained recorded area, production and productivity with highest growth rate in the fourth decade. Finally during the whole study period best performance of onion was found in production followed by area and productivity. The similar trend was found in the calculated value of the mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation and compound growth rate during the study period.

The comparative economics of banana cultivation under drip and conventional irrigation methods was studied by collecting data from 60 drip farms and 60 non-drip farms of Anand district during 2009-10. Though the investment on drip irrigation system for banana crop was expensive (` 84115/ha), the total cost of cultivation in drip farms (` 150098/ha) was slightly less than that in non-drip farms (` 151735/ha). The yield (13.94 per cent) and net profit (52.76 per cent) of banana in drip farms were higher as compared to non-drip farms. Input-Output ratio over cost-c2 under drip and flood method of irrigation was 2.10 and 1.71, respectively. The Cobb-Douglas production function was employed to establish the input-output relationship. The sum of regression co-efficient (Σbi’s) was 1.072 and 1.109 for non-drip and drip banana farms, respectively indicating increasing return to scale. MVP/FC ratios were also worked out to examine the resource use efficiency more reliably. It was found that the resources viz, plantlets (tissue culture), irrigation and area were underutilized in drip farms indicating these inputs were not optimum in context to other inputs in order to get maximum profit and therefore, there is yet some scope to increase productivity in the study area of drip farms of banana.

Agriculture will continue to be the major sector supporting the Indian economy. On the other hand, the reported and projected impact of climate change raises question against its sustainability and stability. The present paper through reviewing of the relevant literature therefore aims to address three interrelated issues. The first issue on climate change reflected that the annual temperature increase by 0.5ËšC during the period 1901-2003 and to counteract the negative impact of climate change, the farming community resorted to adaptation strategies, mainly adoption of resistant cultivars. Concerning this need, the Central Government initiated the mega project National Initiatives on Climate Research Agriculture (NICRA) with a budget of ` 200 crores during the year 2010-11 and the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) scheme with a budget support of ` 1,08,000 crores in order to provide resilient to agriculture with one of the main components on the development of crop cultivars. Emphasizing the need for research in agriculture particularly under the climate change scenario the third issue on the status of Agricultural R&D investment in India was discussed and revealed that the level of Agricultural Research Indicator (ARI) is below the recommended level of 2% being only 0.43% during the year 2012-13. Meeting the need of the farming community coupled with the objectives of the mentioned Government initiatives and the target set to attain 2% of ARI during the twelve plan the study recommended that Agricultural R&D investment needs to be strengthened to maintain the viability of Indian agriculture.

This study focuses on the aspects of resource use efficiency of onion growers in the Indo-Gangetic Region of West Bengal, India. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been used in measuring efficiency level of stakeholders followed by K-means clustering for grouping them into homogeneous strata. The prime objective of this study is to explore the scope of increasing onion-yield as well as production using current resource base at the disposal of farmers. Additionally, characterization of growers in terms of several socio-economic indicators was made and studied. Finally, the study ends with advocating policy intervention measures in the gray fields. The study observed much potential for augmenting onion-yield with existing resource base of farmers with careful interventions.

The present study was conducted in Senapati Hill district of Manipur to work out the costs and returns in paddy cultivation and to determine the factors affecting the adoption of HYVs of rice. A sample of 60 farmers was randomly drawn from three villages of Kangpokpi block of the selected district. The costs and returns per hectare were calculated based on variable costs and fixed costs, and probit model was applied to determine the factors affecting adoption of HYVs.The state has registered negative annual growth (-0.48%) in the case of the area under rice during 2000-01 to 2011-12. Per hectare cost of cultivation for HYVs (` 51260.92/ha) was calculated to be higher as compared to local paddy (` 47093.22/ha) as the cultivation of HYVs of paddy involved higher amount of fertilizer and labours in weeding, harvesting and threshing activities than local paddy. Farmers who have mass media exposure, who are young and who get desired fertilizer in time have a higher probability of adoption of HYVs of rice. The net returns were negative for both, HYVs of paddy (- ` 629.09/ha) or local paddy (-` 9393.00/ha) which may be the reason for declined in rice area. Cultivation of HYVs of rice is more beneficial compared to local rice. So, the government should take proper initiative for adoption of HYVs of rice to make the state self-sufficient in rice production.

Commercialization of agriculture is an activity where farmers produce principally for sale in far off markets, rather than to fulfil their demand for food or to sell in local or nearby markets. Number of different stimuli at different times is responsible for agricultural commercialisation. In Assam about 86 % farmers belong to the small and marginal category. These groups should be oriented towards commercialization of their farms for improving their standard of living. The present study attempted to measure the level of commercialization among the small farmers in Nagaon district of Assam. Multistage random sampling method was used to select the respondents. Household commercialization index was used to measure the level of commercialization. The study revealed that the level of commercialization ranged from 63.3% to 74 %. It was reported that the higher farm size and access to market encouraged the farmers to go for higher level of commercialization.

This study investigated the household drivers of forest dependence for employment support among tribes of Bundu block in Ranchi, Jharkhand (India). Data were collected through structured interviews and non-participant observations administered to 164 households sampled using multi-stage random sampling technique. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyze the data. Results indicated that fodder (34.04%) was the major forest-based employment source followed by fuel wood (24.38%), paid employment (18.31%), cottage industry (16.49%), tooth brush (3.00%), fruit (1.63%), mahua (Madhuca latifolia) flower (0.75%), vegetables (0.57%), oilseeds (0.47%), ethno-medicines (0.20%) and timber (0.17%). Average forest-based employment accrued to the tribal household was 108.23 man-days annum-1. Regression analysis revealed that education, land holding, gross annual income, proximity to the forest, forest visit and forestry resources possession significantly influenced forest dependence for employment support and the R2 (0.786) indicated that 78.60% of the variation in the forest-based employment was explained by the household drivers. The findings and perspective of the study could be crucial bases in planning and administration of strategies for sustainable management of the forest resources and improvement in forest-based employment opportunities for livelihood security and socio-economic development of the tribal people in the locality.

The study was conducted based on available secondary published data collected from various sources pertaining from the period of 1991-92 to 2013-14. The study is an attempt to examine the demographic pattern and changes of cultivators and agricultural labourers in the states, changes of land utilization, shift in technology and state income. It was observed that the states of NE India were thinly populated except in Assam and Tripura. Migration was one of the factors of shift of population in the region. The increase of agricultural labourers was higher which might be due to marginalization and crowded pattern of agriculture. Stagnation of area for agricultural use indicated a slow progress of agricultural development in the states during the last twenty-five years. The cropping pattern as a group in the region inclined towards fruits, vegetables and oilseeds while it declined for spices. The percentage share of cereals did not change during this period; it was higher in Assam and Tripura while it was quite low in other states. Agricultural income did not grow faster and was found to decline in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura which needs the attention of the planners. Agriculture in NE India is still subsistence in nature.