Year: 2025 | Month: September | Volume 12 | Issue 3

Economic Analysis of IPM in Bengal Gram Cultivation under Rainfed Conditions of Dharwad District, Karnataka

Kalavathi K Kambali* Jayashree Pattar and Sumit Ray
DOI:10.30954/2394-8159.03.2025.4

Abstract:

Sustainable pulse production in India has been facing major challenges due to climate variability, high frequency of occurrence of pests and over-reliance on chemical pesticides. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a tool that has become an environmentally friendly and climate-resilient strategy to improve productivity and profitability, and decrease the reliance on pesticides. The current study was carried out in Dharwad district for the year 2024-25 to analyze the economics of IPM for Bengal gram cultivation. A multi-stage random sampling method was used to select 120 farmers from which 60 farmers used IPM and 60 farmers did not use IPM. A pre-tested interview schedule was developed and used for primary data collection, and descriptive statistics, cost and returns analysis, Cobb–Douglas production function and partial budget analysis were used to analyze primary data. Results showed that the level of education of the IPM farmers was relatively higher than that of the non-IPM farmers, and they also had more contact with extension services. The gross returns and net returns harvested by the IPM farmers were ` 88,800/ha and ` 35,350/ha, respectively, much higher than the non-IPM farmers. Also the benefit cost ratio in IPM farms (1.66) was better than the non-IPM farms (1.37) which proves that IPM technology is more economic. The adoption analysis revealed that the main IPM practices adopted by farmers were deep summer ploughing, seed treatment using bio-agents, neem based botanical spray and pheromone trap. The resource use efficiency analysis revealed that there was an efficient allocation of labour, seed, fertilizer and plant protection inputs in the IPM farms. Partial budget analysis showed that adoption of IPM resulted in additional net return of ` 15,030/ha and marginal benefit cost ratio of 4.32. The study resulted that IPM is an economically viable and environmentally friendly tactic for bengalgram production in dryland agriculture, which is climate resilient.

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