SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SUGARCANE CROPS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO NWFP

The present study was conducted with the broad aims to know about area, production, and profitability of sugarcane crops with special reference to NWFP (i.e., Charsadda, Mardan, Nowshehra and Peshawar districts). Primary as well as secondary data ranging from1983-2005 were used for analysis. Cobb-Douglas production function has been used in order to identify the various factors (i.e., land, labour and capital) impact on sugarcane production in the study area and the method of least squares (OLS) has been applied as an analytical technique. The results revealed that innovation/technology has a positive influence on the dependent variable output. Further, results shows that the sum of the elasticities is greater than unity, this implies that the agricultural sector is producing in the stage of increasing return to scale, which means that the allocation of inputs in this sector is not optimal.