Marketable Surplus and Size-Classes of Holdings

The marketable surplus of any subsistence crop depends on the availability of cultivated land under the crop. Besides this, among the factors that permit the farmer to increase his marketable surplus the most important one is his family size. If the family size is big, the marketable surplus will be relatively lower, even for the big-sized farms. Per capita availability of cultivated land among the larger farms is certainty higher compared to the smaller ones, but per capita availability of land under a specific crop need not be higher in the larger size groups than the smaller farms. The phenomenon of marketable surplus should be examined not in terms of size-classes of holdings but with the acreage of individual crops separately against each size-class.