A Simple Multi Period Budgeting Techique For The Economic Analysis Of Multi Enterprise Models Of Coconut Based Farming Systems
The existing methods of assessing the economics of perenni al croppi ng systems do not meet the current needs of rational coconut farmers, as the cost of time is mostly omitted in their calculations. The coconut farmers compare the long term investments with other alternatives including fixed bank deposits and other non-farm investments. Hence, there is a need for a simple form of multt-period budgeting technique that could be used by the researchers as we 11 as the extensionists to compare the long-term alternat i ve investments available to the coconut farmers. The technique of multi-period budget ing was used for the analysis, taking the cost of time required for the product)on of crops into account. The expected future revenues from different multi-enterprise models were valued in terms of the sum of their Net Present Values and thei r Amort i sed Values or Annui ties whi ch were used as the main criteria for economic comparisons. Subsidiary criteria, such as return per labour day, cost/price sensitivity index, discount rate sensi t i VIty i ndex, 1 and use factor and crop intensi ty factor also were used. The sensitivity of the SNPV to changes of major uncertain parameters such as prices, yields and personal discount rates were analysed to rank the alternative models. This simple form of multi-period budgeting technique could be adopted by the researchers and extensionts to rank, compare and to explain the coconut farmers, the economics of different multi period, multi-enterprise models that are being recommended for their Coconut Based Farming Systems.