Vol. 8, Issue 9, Part L (2024)

Cotton (Gossypium spp.) is the principal commercial crop in India, influencing the country's economy as it provides remunerative income and employment to most of the people. Cotton is popularly known as 'The King of Fibers' or 'The White Gold’. The present study was conducted in Nagpur, Umred and Kalmeshwar tehsil of Nagpur districts during 2023-24. The soil health card beneficiary and non-beneficiary cotton farmers were selected randomly and the primary data was collected from the selected farmers in pretested schedule. For the study, data were collected from 60 beneficiary and 60 non-beneficiary farmers. The cost and returns were estimated by using the standard cost concepts. The total cost i.e. cost ‘C₃’ for soil health card beneficiary and non-beneficiary was observed ₹ 100864.81 and ₹ 103058.15, respectively. The benefit-cost ratio was worked out for the beneficiary cotton was 1.63 at cost ‘C₃’ and for non-beneficiary cotton was 1.41 at cost ‘C₃’. The impact of soil health card has found that yield of cotton increased by 11.93 percent. The net income increased from ₹ 42854.28 to ₹ 63466.46 per hectare by 48.10 percent. The benefit-cost ratio increased from 1.41 to 1.63 on adoption of recommended doses of fertilizers by the farmers. Thus soil health card was found highly beneficial to the beneficiary farmers in term of increasing their income.