Comparative Profitability Analysis with Resource Use Efficiency of Sugarcane-based Intercropping Systems in Haryana

Agriculture is a vital sector of the Indian economy; its contribution to GDP has been steadily declining due to the improper use of resources, particularly irrigation.An investigation was undertaken to assess resource-use efficiency for the sugarcane intercropping system, including sugarcane as a sole crop (CS-I), sugarcane + wheat (CS-II), sugarcane + mustard (CS-III), and sugarcane + vegetables (CS-IVa+b), in the Jagadhari and Radaur blocks of Yamunanagar district, Haryana. From each block, 30 farmers were selected by multistage random sampling and a total of 60 farmers were interviewed to extract all desired information.The Cobb-Douglas production function technique was employed to determine resource-use efficiency across different Sugarcane intercropping systems. Human and machine labour (CS-I); human labour and fertiliser (CS-II); human labour and plant protection chemicals (CS-III); human labour, machine labour and seed (CS-IVa), and human labour, machine labour and seed (CS-IVb) were underutilised. In contrast, plant protection (CS-I), seed (CS-II), (CS-III), (CS-IVa) and irrigation (CS-IVb) were overutilised. These results indicated that maximising returns could be achieved by more effectively using these inputs from sugarcane intercropping systems.