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Abstract
The state of Madhya Pradesh is one of the traditional maize growing
states, accounting for 13 per cent of the total maize area and contributing
equally to the total maize production in the country. However, its
productivity when compared to other maize growing states is very low.
The study has found that even though a majority of the farmers cultivate
improved maize cultivars, the overall technology adoption by them is
poor. This may be due to the inability of a majority of farmers to follow the
recommended package of practices for the improved cultivars because of
the high costs involved in their adoption and lack of infrastructural
facilities. Therefore, steps need to be initiated to solve this problem.
A comparison of costs on cultivation of traditional, composite and hybrid
cultivars has revealed that the cost increases significantly on using the
improved cultivars due to higher requirements of fertilizers, irrigation, and
plant protection chemicals as compared to those in the traditional varieties.
However, with the significant increase in yield, the unit cost of production
has been much lower in the case of improved cultivars. The economics of
cultivation of maize when compared with its competing crops like paddy
and soybean have revealed that the paddy is superior to all the maize
cultivars in output/input ratio. The hybrid maize has been found superior
to soybean as well as paddy in terms of net returns and hence the farmers
could cultivate maize rather than paddy since the latter has higher water
requirement. The estimation of technical efficiency of the farmers has
revealed that on an average the sample farms operate 23 per cent below
the frontier output levels. Hence, it has been observed that the maize
output can be increased through adoption of proper technology by the
farmers. It requires support from both the state government (in terms of providing infrastructural/ institutional support like drying and storage
facilities, arrangement for assured procurement, etc.) as well as the private
companies (in terms of supply of quality seeds and chemical pesticides at
reasonable prices).