Investigating the impact of Zero Tillage on small farmer’s wheat production and Income: A case of District Sialkot, Pakistan

Zero tillage (ZT) implies the practice of planting a new crop in the soil left unprepared after the harvesting of the previous crop. The most dominant benefit of no-tillage is an improvement in soil biological fertility, making soils more resilient. Zero-tillage also reduces the cost of production and saves time for sowing of wheat by 10-15 days as compared to conventional tillage. District Sialkot was selected as the study areas of this study based on its diversity in agriculture and the probability of zero tillage practices in this area. Two groups of respondents were selected with almost similar socioeconomics characteristics practicing their farming operations under similar biophysical conditions. The first group comprises small farmers who were practicing conventional tillage technology and the second group include small farmers who were practicing zero tillage technology. Against this backdrop, the purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of zero tillage on small farmers’ wheat production and to assess the impact of zero tillage on small farmers’ income arising from the wheat crop. We collected primary data from 150 farmers through a structured questionnaire in district Sialkot of Punjab Province of Pakistan. The study identified that zero tillage wheat growing farmers used more quantity of seed than conventional wheat growing farmers in the study area. While a number of irrigations is also used more in conventional wheat as compared to Zero Tillage wheat. The results reflected that conventional farmers spend more on fertilizer, irrigation, chemical application than the zero tillage farmers. Variable cost is also higher for the conventional technique (Rs. 13698.02) than the zero tillage technique (Rs. 9723.9). Conventional wheat farmers have to spend more not only for irrigation but have to take extra care to look after in form of labor for their wheat crop, because of heavy investment made in conventional tillage wheat crop.