12. ANALYSIS OF RESOURCE USE EFFICIENCY IN RICE CULTIVATION UNDER DIFFERENT IRRIGATION SYSTEMS IN TAMIL NADU by V. BALAMURUGAN AND K. MANI

Abstract

Rice growing heavily consumes fresh water. At the same time, the country’s rice production has to be increased to feed the growing population and to sustain food security. Hence, much of water saving has to come from irrigation by increasing the water use efficiency at farm level. The present study seeks to analyse the resource use efficiency of rice cultivation under different systems of irrigation viz., canal, tank and well irrigation conditions. Production function was employed to evaluate the factors that influenced the yield obtained from rice cultivation through different systems of irrigation Cobb-Douglas production function was used to study the resource use efficiency. The sum of the elasticity of regression co-efficient was worked out to be 0.29, which implied a decreasing returns to scale for canal irrigated system of rice cultivation. The sum of the elasticity of regression co-efficient worked out to be 1.04, which implied an increasing return to scale for tank irrigated rice cultivation. The sum of the elasticity of regression co-efficient was worked out to be 1.02, which implied an increasing return to scale for well irrigated rice cultivation.
KEY WORD: Rice cultivation, Canal, Tank and Well Irrigation Systems, Cobb-Douglas Production Function, Resource Use Efficiency.