Groundnut is an important oilseed and Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh occupies a prominent position both in acreage and production. Data was obtained from forty farmers using structured questionnaire and the input-output relation of groundnut production via Cobb-Douglas production function was examined in this study. It was found that the sum of elasticities was 0.73. The result of the t’ test proved that in groundnut farms S bi  was less than one, it indicates decreasing returns to scale, which indicates some of the inputs are excessively used. The production elasticities for human labour, bullock labour, machine labour charges, seed cost and pesticides were positive and significant where as farm yard manure and fertilizers cost was negative which showed that increase in these costs result in decrease in output. The MVP of selected input variables were estimated to be 25.08, 4.21, 6.74, 1.87, 17.34, -19.46 and -7.67 showing that FYM and fertilizers are over utilized and the rest of the variables are underutilized. The groundnut production in the study area would be profitable.

In the present paper an attempt has been made to examine the role of women in Andhra Pradesh Agriculture especially in natural resource management. The study focused on studying participation of women in crop management, wage discrimination, ownership, access to economic resources and economic decision making and natural resources management at micro level and macro level.  The study revealed that about 22% of cost of cultivation and 56% of the labour cost is incurred towards female labour accounting to Rs 3424 out of cost of cultivation Rs. 19725/ha in case of paddy cultivation. The economic value of women’s participation was accounting to be Rs. 2558 of the total cost of cultivation (Rs. 13567/- per ha) of sorghum. There was a glaring difference in wage rates revealing discrimination between men and women wage rates. The year to year (y-t-y) wage difference was only 12.73 during 2000-01 a decade ago, later grew to 35.13 during 2010-11. The lower wage rates to women were because female labour is available in plenty than male labour. Policy initiatives such as identify women as a key player in NRM both at micro and macro level, when the Govt. distributes surplus land, it has to consider the possibility of transferring the ownership of land to women encourage leasing out fallow land for cultivation of food crops through women SHGs, train the tribal women on how to make use of NFTP and other MFP without disturbing forest cover.

: This paper has been drawn from part of work done by the authors to assist Varsha NGO, Hyderabad in project on the value chain analysis of maize with an objective to study the economics of maize farmers cultivating under tank irrigation and constraints faced by them in Mahbubnagar district. The study showed that out of total cost of cultivation of Rs. 32041.23 per hectare, the operational costs contributed 84.41 per cent and the remaining 15.59 per cent by fixed costs. Farmers secured a net benefit cost ratio of Rs.0.56, i.e., receiving Rs. 0.56 for every rupee invested in maize cultivation. Small farm holdings and limited resource availability and vagaries of monsoon like drought associated with highest cost on labour increased pressure of diseases/pests are the major constraints faced by the farmers in the study area.

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