Integrated Pest Management Technology as a Means to Cost Efficiency for Cotton Crop in Rajasthan, India

Aim: This research is an attempt to uncover the production opportunities of cotton grown with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) technology in Rajasthan, India.

Study Design: The study is based on both descriptive and exploratory type of research design.

Place and Duration of the Study: The study was conducted at Institute of Agri Business Management, Swami Keshwanand Rajasthan Agricultural University, Bikaner, Rajasthan. Sri Ganganagar and Hanumangarh districts of Rajasthan were selected under cotton cultivation for the study. The time duration of the project was for the crop year 2017–18.

Methodology: The respondents for the study were cotton farmers following different pest control measures in the study area. Multistage stratified random sampling method was followed for the research. Two major districts of Irrigated North Western Plain Zone (Zone Ib) were purposely selected. Based on experts’ opinion, villages were selected under three technologies viz. IPM, conventional and mix of both technologies. The list of farmers following IPM and mix of both technologies was collected from Central Integrated Pest Management Centre (CIPMC), Sri Ganganagar and lists of farmers following conventional technology were collected from respective gram panchayats. The sample size for the study was limited to 90 in numbers. The selection of farmers was based on probability proportional to size (PPS) method on the basis of their land holdings from each village. The analysis was done by calculating returns over variable cost, benefit-cost ratio and resource use efficiency of data collected from the field.

Results: The variable costs for the cultivation of cotton per hectare are ₹ 48001.78, ₹ 49105.66 and ₹ 48441.93 for the farmers following IPM, conventional and the mix of both technologies, respectively. The benefit to cost ratio in IPM was found to be the highest i.e. 2.23, followed by 2.04 for mix of both technology, and 1.85 for conventional technology. The estimation of resource use efficiency in cotton indicated the under-utilization of human labour in case of IPM and mix of both technologies and over-utilization of machine labour in case of conventional and IPM technology.

Conclusion: The IPM technology was found to be economical for the farmers growing cotton in the study area. The resources like human labour, machine labour, fertilizers and manure as well as plant protection measures were suggested to be effectively utilized for better cost effectiveness among the farmers in the study area.