Agricultural Credit, A Critical Input on Farmers Income: A Study From Nayagarh District of Odisha

In order to protect agriculture and other allied sectors, credit is indispensable for a farmer to expand and run his business more efficiently and properly which may not otherwise be possible on his savings. In this perspective, an investigation was made to show the weightage of farm credit on the farmers’ income which was designed through a random sample survey of hundred credit availed farmers in the diverse agriculture terrains of Nayagarh block of Nayagarh district and analyzed by statistical tools like regression analysis and descriptive statistics. The statistical analysis indicated that the farm credit per household, land holding have positive and significant relationship with the household income while family size and farm expenditure are negatively related to the household income. The R2 value is 0.74 that indicated 74 per cent of the variation in dependent variable is explained by the independent variables. There is decreasing returns to scale (0.766). The average per acre farm expenses and income from sale of the crop of a sample respondent of the pooled category was Rs 15753 and Rs 31606 respectively. The farmers efficiently utilized the agricultural credit, but at the same time there should be provision for procurement of perishable goods by the government or bank agencies that would secure the income of farm borrowers. In addition, a timely and need based support in creation of quality asset will lead to the overall economic growth of the block as well as the district and ramify business of the banks.