Factors Affecting Demand for Human Labour in Punjab Agriculture

Authors

  • KAMALA, BALDEEP SINGH, S.K. CHAUHAN

Keywords:

Wage rate, Farm size, Family annual income, Cropping intensity and Human labour

Abstract

A study was conducted in three agro-climatic zones i.e. sub-mountainous zone (Zone I), central zone (Zone II) and south-western (Zone III) zone of Punjab. Rupnagar district from the sub-mountainous zone, Jalandhar from the central zone and Bathinda from the south-western zone were selected randomly for the study. The primary data were collected from 144 farmers to examine the factor affecting demand for human labour. To analyze the data mean, range and Cobb-Douglas production function were used. The average size of land holding on sample farms was 7.38 hectares who made an annual overall expenditure on hired labour to the extent of Rs. 3.04 lakh. On the other hand, the average annual household income of cultivators was Rs. 17.20 lakh. The cropping intensity estimate stood in the range of 100 to 220 per cent; however, overall average was 112.19 per cent. The average use of human labour utilization per farm stood at 1010.94 mandays.  The production function revealed that 97 per cent of the variation in the human labour employment was explained by the selected explanatory variables such as hired labour charges, farm size and family annual income. The coefficients of hired labour charges (0.161), farm size (1.316) and family annual income (0.001) were statistically significant. However, the results for cropping intensity were opposite to prior expectation. With regards to farm labour demand, the farm size and family annual income makes significant contribution to the increased use of hired labour and measures should be taken to expand the cropping intensity which could serve as an instrument for expanding the market for hiring labour.

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Published

2022-01-31