Abstract:
Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a principle vegetable crop in Bangladesh for its
commercial and nutritional value. The current study was basically designed to
determine the ―Profitability Analysis of Potato Cultivation: A study on some selected
areas of Munshiganj district." Primary data were collected random selection method
from five Upazilas under Munshiganj district namely Lohajang, Sreenagar,
Sirajdikhan, Tongibari and Gazaria. Descriptive statistics and Cobb-Douglas
production function were applied to achieve the objectives of the study. The study
found that potato production was lucrative. Total cost of potato growing was BDT
144650.24 and the gross return amount was BDT 332500.00 per hectare. The net
return from potato production was BDT 187849.76 per hectare. Undiscounted Benefit
Cost Ratio (BCR) was found 1.29. The outcome of the Cobb- Douglas production
function showed increasing returns to scale and also exhibited that potato cultivation
was highly dominated by human labor, irrigation, manure, fertilizer, insecticide etc.
Efficiency analysis indicated that most of the farmers inefficiently used the inputs
except human labor, MOP, TSP and insecticide. The study also revealed some
constraints associated with potato cultivation. These were grouped into economic and
technical, marketing and storage problems. Again, the limitation includes lack of
financial capital, high cost of the input, low cost of output, inadequate quality seed,
high cost of labor and lack of extension services, etc. The problems and constraints, of
course, are interrelated with one another and hence, need to be removed
comprehensively for the overall betterment of potato growers.
