Impact of mechanization on time savings and timeliness of operation in cotton cultivation

India is a significant cotton producer, occupying 23 per cent of the global cotton growing area and contributing about 10 per cent of the total cotton production. However, the average productivity in India is lower as compared to other countries. Improved farm implements and machinery are rightly called as 'input of inputs'. It has been recognized as an integral part of agricultural development for improving resource use efficiency and productivity in agriculture. Government spending huge amount on accelerating the pace of farm mechanization by providing various tools and machineries at subsidized rate to the farmers. As all these efforts of farm mechanization connected with investment on the part of government. The investigation was planned to assess impact of farm mechanization on cotton growers. The study conducted in forty villages of ten talukas and five districts of Western Vidarbha region of Maharashtra State. Respondent farmers were selected on the basis of use of improved farm implements& machineries in cotton cultivation from last 3 years either benefitted under the scheme or using it on hiring basis as user of mechanized farming and those farmers following the farm operations through traditional method and non-beneficiary of any mechanization scheme as non-user. A pre-tested structured interview schedule was used to collect the data from the respondents by personal interview method. Two parameters were selected to study the impact namely, time saving and timeliness of operation in cotton cultivation. The finding of the study revealed that there was 67.15per cent change in timeliness of operations and 62.97 per cent change in time saving. Thus, cotton growers who adopt mechanized farming techniques experience an overall impact of 65.06 per cent as compared to those who practice non-mechanized farming, excluding cotton picking operation. Therefore, further efforts are needed to raise awareness among farmers about the importance of mechanization in cotton farming to elevate the impact from a high to a very high level.