Agriculture requires three major resources, land, water and energy. Land, being a fixed resource, agricultural productivity could be linked directly to the availability of water (rain or irrigation) and energy inputs. Land preparation, irrigation, harvesting, threshing and transportation are the main tasks dependent on mechanical energy apart from manure input, seed etc. Since rainfed paddy is the major crop, agriculture in Uttara Kannada is less dependent on irrigation. However, there is scope to grow a second crop through irrigation. Water and the associated average daily energy requirements depend on the area irrigated, type of crop, sources of water, total period of irrigation and irrigation efficiency. Farm Yard Manure (FYM) is a major component of the input energy in paddy cultivation. However, the level of input changes from zone to zone (hilly, interior and coastal) and across various landholdings. The energetics in rainfed paddy cultivation is discussed in this paper. Detailed analyses of energy input in various categories of farmers, based on stratified random sampling, show that marginal farmers get higher yield compared to others. The energy input in this category in the form of FYM is almost double to that applied by large farmers (>2 ha). This greater usage of FYM by marginal farmers is attributed to higher dung availability (livestock per hectare in the marginal farmers category is almost twice that of medium farmers or four times that of large farmers).