Resource Use Efficiency of Wheat in Betul District of Madhya Pradesh

The present study is an attempt to examine resource use efficiency of wheat crop in Betul district of Madhya Pradesh and also identify of the constraints encountered in production of wheat by the farmers to achieve the potential yield of wheat. The study was conducted in 2013-14 and the results reveals that human labour was found significant for large (0.419) and overall (0.156) farm, while it non-signification for small and medium farms. Machine labour was found significant for all size of farms i.e. small (0.551) medium (0.526) large (0.370) and overall (0.687) farm size. Seed and fertilizer was found significant for small and overall farm. In case of marginal value productivity it was found that in small size farm the factors of production i.e. machine labour (X2), seed (X3), fertilizers (X4) and irrigations (X5) had been found underutilized, whereas human labour (X1) implying over utilization under the study area. The constraints related to wheat production i.e. high price of quality seed was reported by 68% farmers followed by lack of knowledge about nutrient content 67%, high price of fertilizer 60%, lack of knowledge of seed treatment 55% etc. were found major constraints.


Introduction
Wheat is important cereal crop growing in Rabi season in India. Globally India is the second largest producer of wheat next to china in terms of area. Total area under wheat crop is about 29.7 million hectare in the country 2012-13. The production of wheat in the country has increased significantly from 75.81 million tons in 2006 to an all-time recorded high 94.9 million tons in 2011-12 and the productivity of wheat was found to be increase from 2602 kg/ha (2004-05) to 3177 kg/ha in 2011-12 (table 1). The major increase in the productivity of wheat has been observed in the state of Haryana, Panjab and Uttar Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh stands on third position with 5.3 million ha area of wheat in the recent years.
Wheat is the major Rabi crop grown in the state of Madhya Pradesh covering 4.89 Million hectare area and 11.54 Million tons of production (2011-12).The total shares of wheat production of Madhya Pradesh state in India is 12.16% the average yield of Madhya Pradesh found to be near about 2360 kg per hectare. The district statistics witness of a sequence of technological changes in crop production particularly of wheat since the inception of green revolution. But the impacts of improved technology have not been so prominent now a day which can fulfill the requirement of wheat for increasing population of district. It is the fact that farmers have little control over production due to agriculture being seasonal and biological in characters resulted in low yield and consequently affects the profit of farmers. The study was conducted with specific objective viz. to estimate resource use efficiency of wheat production and to identify the constraints associates with wheat production and its measures for efficient production.

Methodology
The present study was confined to Betul district of Madhya Pradesh during the year 2013-14 as Betul is one of the tribal population districts of the State and having remarkable area of wheat in the state. One block of Betul district having higher concentration of wheat area and production has been selected purposively. A list of villages from the selected block was prepared with the help of RAEOs. Five villages viz. Suhagpur, Betul Bazar, Kalyanpur, Dhoul and Sakadhi were selected randomly. After selection of villages, the list of those farmers who were growing wheat crop was prepared and classified into 3 size group viz. small (up to 2 hectare), Medium (2-4 hectare), large (above 4 hectare). From each group 20 farmers were selected randomly. Thus, total of 60 farmers were selected for detailed investigations. This study was based on primary and secondary data. The primary data was collected with the help as pretested interview scheduled from selected farmers. The secondary data was collected from the different publications as well as district statistical office.
The resource use efficiency of wheat production was judged by fitting the Cobb-Douglas production function, before fitting the function the zero order correlation coefficients were estimated to test the multicollinearity among the explanatory variables. The specification of the Cobb-Douglas production function equation is as follows.
Y= aX 1 b1 X 2 b2 X 3 b3 X 4 b4 X 5 b5 In the logarithmic form it is assumed a log linear equation as under Log Y = log + b 1 log X + b 2 log X 2 + b 3 log X 3 where, y= gross value of output (Main production + by production) a=

Resource Use Efficiency of Wheat
The table 2 shows that the values of coefficient of multiple determination (R 2 ) were found to be quite high in all farm size (95 to 99%) which indicates that the selected form of the production function was best fitted and able to explain the all independent variables to an extent of 95.5, 95.2 and 99 per cent in small, medium, and large size farms, respectively. The sum of regression coefficient of selected variables was found 0.899 and 0.991 on overall and small farm respectively which shows decreasing return to scale. Whereas in medium and large farms it was found 1.195 and 1.212 indicating increasing return to scale. The values of coefficient of human labour (0.156), machine labour (0.687), seed (0.146) and fertilizer (0.176) were found to be positive and highly significant at overall level ([1]; [2]). The estimation of resource use efficiency revealed that the regression coefficients for machine labour and seed were found to be positive and significant and had value of 0.551 and 0.140, respectively at small size farm. The coefficient of human labour, fertilizer, and irrigation were found positive and non-significant at small size farm, machine labour and seed were important factor and play significant role in wheat production for small size of farms. Resource use efficiency showed that the coefficients for machine labour (0.526) and irrigation (0.242) was found positive and highly significant for medium size farms. Human labour (0.214) seed (0.116) and fertilizer (0.104) resources were found to be positive and non-significant in medium size of farms. In case of large size farm, all the explanatory variables were found positive and significant except seed. Human labour and irrigation was found significant at 10 percent level of probability and machine labour at 5 percent level of probability whereas, fertilizer was found significant at 1 percent level of significant. The coefficient of human labour (0.419) machine labour (0.370) and fertilizer (0.190) were positive and highly significant. Similar findings were also reported by [3], [4] and [5].

Marginal Value Productivity of Wheat
Marginal value productivity of resource of various inputs and their ratio to their respective prices for each size of farm are given in table 3. It was found that small size farm, the factors of production X 2 , X 3 , X 4 , and X 5 , had been underutilized, while factor X 1 implying over-utilization leaving scope for their increased use on sample farm. In case of medium, large and overall size of farms, all the factors i.e. X 1 , X 2 , X 3 , X 4 and X 5 were found to be underutilized. The marginal value productivity of X 1 in small size farm was less than the unit price of respective input implying over utilization of this input and leaving scope for their increase use ( [6] and [7]).