PROFITABILITY OF MAJOR FARMING SYSTEMS IN NORTH COASTAL ZONE OF ANDHRA PRADESH

The presented study was conducted in north coastal Andhra Pradesh based on the primary data collected from 400 farmers and secondary data on farming situations existing in the zone. The zone totally had 20 farming situations across the three districts viz., Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam. The crop and allied activities like dairy, poultry and sheep & goat rearing were considered for the study. The BCR was high in FS-III (1.27), FS-IV (1.38) and FS-VI (1.31) of Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam districts respectively. The results further confirmed that the farming systems with allied activities along with crops were more profitable than cropping alone. The farming systems with sheep & goat rearing yielded more returns than any other farming systems. Response Priority Index (RPI) was used to rank the production constraints of farming systems. Scarcity of labour and high production cost were the major constraints identified through response priority index (RPI)