Agricultural development and income distribution

With the technological change making an impressive impact on the farm production, the present study was developed primarily out of the interest in examining the said impact and its consequent effect on income distribution. The study makes a compara tive analysis of cereal farms and orchards in terms of their resource use efficiency and income inequalities. It also undertakes to analyse the performance of agricultural sector during the planning period by using various trend models and decomposition analysis. Various issues like returns to scale, size productivity relationship and marketed surplus which have been subject of debate in the literature have been analy sed at disaggregated level in the present study. The chief merit of the study is that it provides an adequate statistical evidence on input-matrix and cost of cultivation of two crop enterprises and explores the fundamental parameters of resource-use efficiency at farm level. Consequent upon the changing input-matrix and commercial isation of agriculture, the income distri bution has gone out of proportions in the present study. Therefore, various laws of distribution namely, Pateto Law, Lorenz Gini Coefficient, Herfindahal index, Ent ropy, etc. have been used to arrive at the magnitude of inequality in two crop enter prises. The findings of study have important implications for policy planning of agricul tural development in the State.