Production function analysis for vegetable cultivation in Kullu valley of Himachal Pradesh: Application of Cobb-Douglas production model

Abstract

Vegetable cultivation plays a vital role in the agricultural economy of India. Agriculture is the main occupation of the people of Himachal Pradesh. Vegetable cultivation is facing challenges in profitability and economical use of resources. But a limited research has been done on resource use efficiency and elasticity of production in tomato, cauliflower and peas which are the major vegetable crops grown in Kullu. The present study was carried out in Kullu valley in the year 2019-2020 and multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select sixty farmers from different panchayats and villages on the basis of area they had under these crops. The elasticity of inputs used in the production of vegetables was worked out by fitting Cobb-Douglas production function. The sum of elasticity coefficients in case of tomato (Σbi = 1.22), cauliflower (Σbi = 1.56) and pea (Σbi = 1.31) were greater than unity which is statistically significant and shows increasing returns to scale. The ratio of marginal value product (MVP) to marginal factor cost (MFC) represented by value of r, was greater than unity in tomato for plant protection (8.38) and labour (1.05) which indicated their under-utilization. Value of plant protection (0.30) on the other hand was less than unity in cauliflower, which shows its over-utilization. In case of peas, values for fertilizer (-1.09), seed (-2.44) and FYM (0.87) showed these were over utilized. It is suggested that the farmers should be trained for judicious use of resources.