ABSTRACT The present paper designed to study the cost of cultivation and returns structure of wheat cultivation for the tenant as well as the was owner farmers. The study based on the primary data collected from 180 farmers (120 tenants and 60 owners), spread over all the was major agro-climatic zones of Punjab pertaining to 2017-18. The result of the study revealed that cost of cultivation based on various cost concepts of wheat crop per hectare was slightly lower for tenant farmers in comparison to owner farmers. Cost A was found 2 relatively higher in the case of owner farmers, as it include the actual rent paid for leased-in land along with all the operational cost. The returns overall cost concepts were found to be comparatively higher for tenant farmers in relation to owner farmers. The returns over Cost A were estimated 20360from wheat on tenant farmers as compared to 68896on the owner farmers respectively. The return over 2 ₹ ₹ Cost A reflects the returns for owned human labour for the tenant farmers. Therefore, there is a need to strengthen tenant farmers by 2 ensuring an adequate size of holding, that is, operational landholding should be distributed uniformly among all farm groups on account of providing sustainable income and livelihood to all farmers. Keywords Cost of cultivation, land leasing, return structure, tenant farmers. JEL odes C Q15, R14, R52. Surbhi Bansal and D.K. Grover * Department of Economics and Sociology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141 004 Corresponding author's email: surbhi.bansal1993@gmail.com * Received: January 15, 2020 Revision Accepted: March 23, 2020 Cost and Return Structure of Wheat Crop under Tenant Farmers in Punjab: A Field Survey Manuscript Number: NS20-020 500 Indian Journal of Economics and Development Volume 16 No. SS, 2020, 500-503 DOI: https://doi.org/10.35716/ijed/NS20-020 Indexed in Clarivate Analytics (ESCI) of WoS INTRODUCTION Agricultural development in an agrarian economy largely depends on the existing nature of man-land relationship. Land is one of the most important assets of a farmer, providing food for the family while surplus yield can be used to earn income. For many farmers, leasing of land is a fact of life (Bansal, 2018). For those with no land or insufficient land for their needs, acquiring land through leasing goes a long way to determining the future security. Land is accessed through different forms like buying, mortgaging in and leasing through rental markets. Land leasing/crop sharing is one of the earliest forms of production organization in agriculture. It is still a matter of considerable importance in present agriculture in many countries. In Punjab state, the marginal and small farmers accounted for about 34 percent of the total operational holdings during 2010-2011 (http.www.indiastat.com, 2015). To increase the operational size of holding, small and marginal farmers cultivate land under different tenure systems. Tenancy not only helps to improve the welfare of farmer but also had detrimental effect on the growth of agricultural economy. As a result of significant changes in productivity as well as farm mechanization practices in Punjab, the relationship between landowners and land operators has also undergone some changes. The development of technology or mechanization of agriculture is likely to give rise the future of entrepreneurial farmers who may had leased-inland to increase the scale of their cultivation with the view to earn more returns with their modern mechanical inputs. But, the resource constraint may hinder the use of modern inputs in case of small farmers. On the other hand, certain other inputs such as tractors, tube wells, harvesters, threshers, and costly implements are indivisible in nature and require lumpy investment. These are generally owned by large farmers. As alternative, small farmers are hiring custom services of these mechanical inputs i.e. the large machinery are common in Punjab. It clearly depicted that large farmers having better access to capital assets and financial resources now are in a more favorable position as compared to small farmers. Even some of the small peasants, lacking capital may also have leased-out their land to these farmers. This has an important bearing on the NAAS Score: 4.82 www.naasindia.org UGC Approved UGC-Care List Group II Copyright ©2020 The Society of Economics and Development, except certain content provided by third parties.