AN ECONOMIC STUDY ON IMPROVED PULSES IN SOME SELECTED AREAS OF NORTHERN REGION OF BANGLADESH

Abstract

Pulses are excellent sources of protein, but they are treated as minor crop and receive little attention from farmers and policymakers. Recent statistics shows that Lentil mungbean cover about 59.26 percent of the total cropped area under pulses and provide about 58.31 percent of total pulse production . The overall objective of the present study was to examine socio-demographic profile of lentil, chickpea, mungbean and blackgram farmers who are using improved varieties, to assess profitability and resource use efficiency of improved varieties of lentil, chickpea, mungbean and blackgram, and to assess cooperative advantage of lentil. Pabna and Rajshahi district was selected for the study on the basis of intensive cultivation of those crops. Simple random sampling technique had been used for collecting cross sectional data and information from 50 farmers for each crop. Thus, data were collected from a total of 200 farmers through interview schedule. After analyzing the data, per hectare gross return of lentil, mungbean, chickpea and blackgram were found to be Tk. 90200.00, Tk. 84412.00, Tk. 68510.00 and Tk. 64957.00, respectively. Total costs of lentil, mungbean, chickpea and blackgram were calculated at Tk. 57855.91, Tk. 52995.25, Tk. 49754.73 and Tk. 44455.14 per hectare, respectively. Net returns of lentil, mungbean, chickpea and blackgram were estimated at Tk. 32344.09, Tk. 31416.75, Tk. 18755.27 and Tk. 20501.86 per hectare, respectively. Benefit Cost Ratios were found to be 1.56, 1.59, 1.38 and 1.46 for lentil, mungbean, chickpea and blackgram, respectively. Thus, it was found that the cultivation of lentil, mungbean, chickpea and blackgram were profitable.Production function analysis suggested that, among the variables included in the model, land preparation cost, human labour cost, seed, urea and TSP had a positive and significant effect on the yield of lentil, mungbean, chickpea and blackgram, except for, urea had a negative but significant effect on the yield of blackgram. Efficiency analysis indicated that most of the farmers inefficiently used their inputs. Some of them made excessive and some of them made less use of inputs.The DRC value for lentil was found to be less than one indicating that Bangladesh had comparative advantage in producing lentil for import substitution