Open Access"Economics of Share -Cropping in Haryana (India) Agriculture" - A Comment
Author(s) -
Abdul Salam
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
pakistan development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.154
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 0030-9729
DOI - 10.30541/v20i4pp.447-452
Subject(s) - cropping , agriculture , inefficiency , allocative efficiency , agricultural economics , sample (material) , business , economics , agricultural science , geography , market economy , environmental science , chemistry , neoclassical economics , archaeology , chromatography
Economic efficiency of agriculture in developing countries hasbeen a matter of great interest among the development economists and hasreceived considerable attention in the literature on agriculturaldevelopment. The increasing access to electronic computers andavailability of farm management data have provided further impetus tothe empirical analysis and comparison of economic efficiency amongwell-defined farm groups and a rich body of literature on the subjectappeared during the Sixties and Seventies [2; 3; 4; 6; 7; 8; 10; 11;12;!3; 14 and 15] . "Economics of Share Cropping in Haryana (India)Agriculture" by F. S. Bagi, published in the Spring 1981 issue of thisReview [I], is a recent contribution to the literature dealing witheconomic efficiency of agriculture. Analysing data from a survey of 119farms from Haryana (India), the author concludes that technicalefficiency of the share-cropping farms is lower and there is Significantallocative inefficiency on share-cropping and owner-operated farms. Thecontribution, though analysing an important issue of Haryanaagriculture, however, suffers from some serious methodological problemsand faulty interpretation of some of the empirical results. The 119survey farms on which Bagi's analysis is based, had the followingirrigation pattern: 20 farms fully irrigated, 17 farms totallyunirrigated and remaining 82 farms partly irrigated. It is not clearfrom the study how the sample farms were selected, what samplingprocedure was followed in choosing these farms, and how closely the"Sample farm groups" represented the actual farming situation inHaryana. Therefore, one does not know whether the results can begeneralised to Haryana situation or not.