Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) popularly known as ‘The king of vegetables’, has emerged as fourth most important food crop in India after rice, wheat and maize. Indian vegetable basket is incomplete without Potato. Potato is a nutritionally superior vegetable due to its edible energy and edible protein. It has become an integral part of breakfast, lunch and dinner among the larger population. Being a short duration crop, it produces more quantity of dry matter, edible energy and edible protein in lesser duration of time compared to cereals like rice and wheat. Hence, Potato is considered to be an important crop to achieve nutritional security of the nation. Apart from its biological value it is considered as one of the economically important crops to the farmer. It influences the village economy directly or indirectly to a great extent. Consequently, all the farmers are involved in cultivation of this crop as per their economic strength to generate adequate amount of profit for themselves. This study conducted in the purposively selected Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal to assess the economic impact of potato cultivation on the financial status of the farmers. A multistage random sampling has been adopted to select 150 sample farmers from the rural village. Adequate amount of relevant primary and secondary data have been collected and suffcient amount of statistical tools have been used to fi nd out the desired result of the study. This study revealed that due to non availability of adequate basic facilities coupled with insuffciency of credit and marketing facilities the farmers are unable to generate economic benefit out of this crop. Opinion of the farmers to solve the problems of potato cultivation have been identified in this study which will act as suggestion for the policy maker.
Mondal et al. (Sat,) studied this question.