Resource Use in Sugarcane Cultivation under Tenant and Owner Farms of Assam: A Comparative Economic Analysis

The present paper estimates the cost and returns of sugarcane cultivation, input use efficiency using primary data collected from 37 tenant farms and 47 owner sugarcane growers giving the total of 84 farms on various aspects of costs and returns spread over three blocks in Karbi Anglong district of Assam. It was observed that the tenant farm had lower profit compared to the owner farm in the sugarcane production as the rent paid for the leased in land was observed in tenant farm but not in owner farm as owner farm mostly cultivates in their own land so the cost of cultivation was seen more in tenant farm compared to the owner farm. The cost of resource use was observed to have a positive influence on the sugarcane production but showed no significant difference between them. The resource use by tenant farms were found under-utilising the seed/setts, human labour, fertiliser and machines whereas owner farms were found to use a greater number of seed/setts. The resource use efficiency was found to be better in the owner farmers than the tenant farmers in sugarcane cultivation.