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The Present study is an attempt to understand the economics of trout feed production in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Trout feed production is capital intensive business which requires high initial capital investment. The results revealed that major fixed investment required in trout feed production was feed mill itself which accounted about 71.44 percent of the total investment. The cost and return analysis showed that the variable cost accounts 59.16 percent whereas fixed cost accounted 40.84 percent of the total cost respectively. Among the variable cost raw material was found out to be single most important factor which accounted about 56.37 percent of the total cost which was about 95.28 percent of the total variable cost. The average cost of production of trout feed was Rs.84.33/kg which ranged from Rs.78.45/kg in Kokarnag trout feed mill to Rs.90.2/kg in Manasbal trout feed mill but government has fixed selling price at Rs.73/Kg for the feed to maintain reasonable price level for private trout farmers. The availability and high price of raw material were found to be major constraints faced by feed producers. Economics analysis revealed that both the feed mills are operating at suboptimal level and there is need to utilize the feed mill to its full potential and export the surplus production to neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh and other Himalayan states like Sikkim and Arunachal which will help the state fisheries department to generate extra income which can be used in other developmental activities.

One of the serious impediments to sound policy on freshwater aquaculture is the lack of farm-level data and consistent empirical evidence, especially on income. To understand the income generation through fish seed production through the community participation approach initiative of the Directorate of fisheries, Jharkhand, we analyzed the income distribution pattern of 498 fish seed producers of Jharkhand. The data was collected from different districts of Jharkhand by DoF for the year 2017-18. The results revealed high gender disparity in fish seed production as only 2.41 per cent were found out to be women. It was observed that fish seed production has a high potential to be a very lucrative business as income showed wide variation ranging fromRs.50,000 to Rs.27,50,000. The Lorenz curve analysis showed moderate-income inequality indicating a higher concentration of income with the top 10 per cent of the population. Further investigation showed that the top 10 per cent of the population earned 60 per cent of total cumulative income which was higher than the national average which was 57 per cent while the bottom 50 per cent of the population earned just 20 per cent of total cumulative income. The income inequality from the GINI co-efficient was 0.48 which was lower than the national average which was 0.55. The study concludes that though income inequality is lower than the national average however the concentration of income with top 10 per cent was higher than the national average. A more detailed study on fish seed production is needed to understand the underlying facts for the disparity in income distribution among fish seed producers.

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