Impact of Optimal Cropping Patterns on Incomes in a Punjab District

In: The Pakistan development review: PDR, Band 15, Heft 2, S. 218-221

Abstract

To improve farm incomes in developing countries, the foremost
question that the farmer must address himself to is: what cropping
pattern best uses the fixed resources in order to get the highest
returns? During the last decade, the agricultural economists have shown
great interest in applying the tools of linear programming to individual
farms. Most of the studies conducted elsewhere have shown that, under
existing cropping pattern, farm resources were not being utilized
optimally on the small farms.[l, 4]. We conducted a survey in the
canal-irrigated areas of the Punjab province of Pakistan1 to investigate
into the same problem. This short note aims at identifying the opti¬mal
cropping pattern and to estimate the increase in farm incomes as a
result of a switch towards it on the sampled farms.