The purpose of understanding economic aspects related to different modes of agriculture viz. Ecological, Organic and Chemical is primarily to build awareness among the policy makers, scientists, academicians and development professionals of today's educated world, about the comparative long-term advantages and disadvantages of the three systems. The study also analyses the holistic context of social and cultural complexity with which the traditional cropping systems have evolved over the millenniums and documents it for further debated and comparison with the recent agricultural technologies that intend to invade the 'rights' of farming community through our current policies.

Another dimension that is intended to probe and evaluate is the extent of multiplicity of resource utilisation in the three systems and acknowledge the appropriateness of ecological agriculture which is a system of agricultural evolution operating since time immemorial and evolved with-in the natural carrying capacity and cultural moderateness of the communities with built-in sustainability, that development theorist today argue for.

This is also important as the new experiences show: that global sustainable agriculture can only be achieved if planned based on the ecological and socio-regional differences. This is evident from the fact that our forefathers based on local climate, topography, soil conditions, floral and faunal diversity have evolved the methods of cultivation and related practices. It was their instinct to survive, which inspired them to create a delicate balance amidst ecological constraints and physiological needs. But since commodification and market oriented agricultural development has started there has been no end in the ways and means through which we are loosing precious balance between anthropological actions and its accrued effects on ambience.

In the changing global situations and rapidly deteriorating environment, relevance of ecological agricultural practices in the context of a country like India is most appropriate as it complements with the socio-cultural realm and economic adventure to compete globalization through localization of 65% of rural population.

World wide efforts are on to comprehend and make the best use of local knowledge but to capture the complexities of traditional agriculture knowledge in its whole, is a unique challenge, as the benefits accrue over a long period of time cannot be analysed during the study period. We at Deccan Development Society, Pastapur are also constantly challenged with an array of methodological as well as practical problems to do so. Experiences gathered from the past phase of the study has today made us adept with the technicalities of the study. In this phase we have adapted a methodological design developed by FAO, which is unequivocally elaborate but poses difficulties in its practical application as it assumes that farmers maintain a mental or bookish record of their activities and expenditures.

Thus a major challenge in the process of documenting farmer's practices is the illiteracy factor, as an ideal method for collecting relevant data would be the farmers them selves making record of the activities. But, we believe that illiteracy cannot be a limiting factor: through a joint effort by selecting local literate people and developing pictorial tools for the farmers we intend to facilitate this research process.

Further to attenuate the farmer from rigorous questionnaire based data collection methods who are engrossed in their day to day chores on the land and do not have the patience and attentiveness to sit and meticulously write activities performed on the individual farms and plots a pictorial tool is designed to collect primary information which further acts as reference point and facilitates the data writers to ask the most relevant questions on weekly basis.

The research will analyse a total of 180 small and marginal farms from 20 villages constituting of 60 farmers each from three different types of agricultural system viz. Ecological, organic and chemical that are extant in the project area.

Data collection has been designed to be a two way self monitoring system that opportune regular interactions between the data writers who are essentially local literate people with the necessary know how about the existing agricultural systems and have personal rapport with the farmers. A data schedule constituting, questions pertaining to family details, land details, livestock, implements used, market places, on-farm biodiversity details, and agricultural operations and their costs is updated weekly by data writers. Regular monthly interaction among data writers in facilitated to cross check and reconfirm if any doubt arises, which is than coded, computed and fed into a database.

In view that, most of the farmers were illiterate, designing of an easy to use method of recording agricultural information was necessary. A Pictorial Tool, for this purpose is being experimented for the current study, basic details like time of a particular operation, quantity of materials or number of men and women involved in the operation, details of wage rates and the relevant costs are recorded by the farmers daily.

The study is on going with 20 field associates, 1 data coordinator and a computer technician as final modalities were conceived in April-May 2002. Data is being regularly collected for the current two agricultural seasons i.e. Kharif and Rabi. Study farmers have sown a range of food grain crops like three types of jowar, green gram, black gram, pigeon pea, foxtail millets, pearl millet, hibiscus etc. In spite of the delayed monsoon this year, and re-sowing in some of the villages, crops are gestating and by the next month harvest data for Kharif season will be recorded.