Resource Use Efficiency of Groundnut in Anantapur District of Andhra Pradesh

Groundnut is an important oilseed and Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh occupies a prominent position both in acreage and production. Data was obtained from forty farmers using structured questionnaire and the input-output relation of groundnut production via Cobb-Douglas production function was examined in this study. It was found that the sum of elasticities was 0.73. The result of the t’ test proved that in groundnut farms S bi was less than one, it indicates decreasing returns to scale, which indicates some of the inputs are excessively used. The production elasticities for human labour, bullock labour, machine labour charges, seed cost and pesticides were positive and significant where as farm yard manure and fertilizers cost was negative which showed that increase in these costs result in decrease in output. The MVP of selected input variables were estimated to be 25.08, 4.21, 6.74, 1.87, 17.34, -19.46 and -7.67 showing that FYM and fertilizers are over utilized and the rest of the variables are underutilized. The groundnut production in the study area would be profitable.