Productivity growth in agriculture is of paramount importance as higher yields are associated with declining rural poverty, suggesting that impact of growth in agricultural production on poverty remains high (Himanshu et al. 2010). The oilseed crops play an important role in agricultural development of India, sharing 14 per cent of the country’s gross cropped area and accounting for about 3 per cent of the gross domestic product and nearly 6 per cent of the value of all agricultural products (ICAR-IIOR, 2015). Present study was aimed to Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth in three oilseed crops in the state of Rajasthan during the period 2000-01 to 2015-16. In the present study, the Tornqvist Theil Index used to compute the total input index, total output index and total factor productivity index (TFPI). The Tornqvist Index is particular for the homogenous translog production function that can carry a second order approximation to an subjective twice differentiable standardized production function. The results of this study have indicated low TFP in rapeseed & mustard4 (1.14 per cent per annum) despite a 66.38 per cent share in the total oilseed output of the state. The annual compound growth rate of TFP of soybean decreased at the rate of 0.067 per cent per annum (Negative growth). Whereas, the compound growth rate of TFP of annual green soybean crop increased at the 2.71 per cent per annum (high growth) while its TFP to output growth was about 73.26 per cent. The real cost of production of rapeseed & mustard and soybean increased by 0.77 and 2.98 per cent per annum, respectively while 0.02% decreased in sesamum crop.

Highlights

• TFP analysis of the study indicated that sesamum experienced high growth rate (>2 %).
• Rapeseed & mustard experienced moderate growth rate (1-2 %) of technologic change in Rajasthan state.
• Soybean registered negative growth in total factor productivity.