Can Farm Mechanization Enhance Small Farmers’ Income? A Lesson learnt of Lower Shivalik hills of Indian Himalayan Region

Abstract Indian farming is fraught with small land holdings, and farm mechanization's economic viability has remained a debatable issue at the core of Indian agriculture's technology growth. The authors attempted to determine the socio-agro-economic impact of seed cum fertiliser drill and zero tillage through Difference In Difference(DID) method with ex-ante (before application) and ex-post (after application) approach. Results depicted labour costs were reduced by almost 80% and seed savings were reduced by 20%. The seed cum fertiliser drill and zero tillage adopters saved a sum of Rs. 3764.10 and Rs. 4047.54 from 1 ha of land, respectively. An effort was also made to quantify the additional economic benefit by using the Apparently Unrelated Regression (SUR) model to apply selected forms of machinery to different varieties. Seed cum fertiliser drill and zero tillage results have been found to increase yield by 13.39 quintals and 6.0 quintals per ha respectively and decrease the seed rate by 27.71 kg/ha and 24.20 kg /ha, respectively, for the HD 2967 wheat variety. The growth of the agricultural mechanisation sector is hindered by machine cost, the widespread existence of resource poor farmers, and inaccessibility of agricultural technology. In addition, few suggestions on critical aspects were made on the basis of the application of technology in different states to implement suitable policies for the additional financial advantage of farmers.