Abstract

The economy of tribal population primarily depends on agriculture. Heavy deterioration of natural resources in the forest area and reduction in the flora and fauna made their shifting cultivation unfeasible. Since access to agricultural technology and inputs from the state or private sector machinery is much weaker their net returns from agriculture are also much lower. A study undertaken in the Sittilingi Valley of Dharmapuri district among 50 tribal and 50 non-tribal farmers selected randomly to compare tribal farming with non-tribal farming is more essential to document the economic condition of tribal farming. The resource use efficiency among tribal and non tribal farms revealed that the production functions fitted were found to be on the increasing returns to scale underlying the scope to increase the inputs for increasing the productivity. Since access to institutional credit facilities was found to be much weaker, a Farmers Interest Group (FIG) is suggested to be established among them, which may help the tribal farmers to invest more on farm inputs so that the productivity of crops can be increased considerably

Keywords: Tribals, Cobb-Douglas production function, resource use efficiency