India’s Agricultural Marketing


Book Description

​The proposed book provides an assessment of an important yet controversial policy initiated by the Indian government and governments of several other developing countries. Marketing reforms, it is claimed, can be a crucial answer to solving the problem of rural poverty in agrarian economies where large sections of populace are engaged in low paying agriculture. On a wider front, these reforms could help in providing growth impetus to an economy and even the global economy at large. Yet, the subject of liberalizing agricultural markets is also part of a broad and perhaps a bitter political debate between national and sub-national policy makers and academic discourses in India and other countries. A clearer understanding and a possible resolution of the issues involved will be decidedly useful. The experience of India, one of the largest and most agriculture-dominated economies, will undoubtedly provide valuable lessons not only for steering the domestic economic policy but also for other countries to set their own policy agenda. The book attempts to capture the evolving reality in a large and diverse country and presents an objective evaluation to enable aspiring investors and those in policy making, food business and civil society to make more informed assessment and decision.







Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton seed production in North-Eastern Karnataka: An economic analysis


Book Description

Karnataka is one of the nine major Bt cotton growing states in the country. The Bt cotton seed production focussed on the socio-economic characteristics of contract farmers, cost and return, efficiency of resource use and problems faced by the farmers in Bt cotton seed production under different companies. Five companies having highest area under Bt cotton seed production were selected for study. The present study was conducted with primary data collected entirely based on a multistage random sampling technique from 200 Bt cotton seed production growers who have contracted with the different seed companies. The study pertained to the agricultural year 2012-13. The total cost of Bt cotton seed production varied from one company contract farmers to other company contract farmers. The total cost was found to be higher (Rs.96829) in case of JK seeds company contract farmers followed by the farmers who have contracted with Monsanto seeds company (Rs.95797). While, the net returns obtained from Bt cotton seed production was found to be higher in case of Monsanto seeds company contract farmers (Rs.46387) followed by Kaveri seeds company contract farmers (Rs.33076). The Cobb-Douglas production function revealed that the farmers who have contracted with different seed companies, the use of seed was found to be optimum across all company contract farmers. Whereas, fertilizer resource was over utilized by farmers who have contracted with various companies. Non availability of trained labour and prevalence of high wage rate were the major constraints in case of production, where as poor technical assistance and low contract price were the contractual problems. The other problems regarding plant protection, high incidence of diseases was the major constraint in Bt cotton seed production and in case of marketing, high price of parents of Bt cotton seeds and low price of the seeds offered by the agencies were the major ones. Therefore the Bt cotton seed production technology had positive impact on Socio- economic status of farmers by increase in yield and reducing cost on inputs thereby increase in income and also standard of living.




The Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics


Book Description

Vols. include Proceedings of the conference of the Indian Society of Agricultural Economics.










The Potato Crop


Book Description

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book provides a fresh, updated and science-based perspective on the current status and prospects of the diverse array of topics related to the potato, and was written by distinguished scientists with hands-on global experience in research aspects related to potato. The potato is the third most important global food crop in terms of consumption. Being the only vegetatively propagated species among the world’s main five staple crops creates both issues and opportunities for the potato: on the one hand, this constrains the speed of its geographic expansion and its options for international commercialization and distribution when compared with commodity crops such as maize, wheat or rice. On the other, it provides an effective insulation against speculation and unforeseen spikes in commodity prices, since the potato does not represent a good traded on global markets. These two factors highlight the underappreciated and underrated role of the potato as a dependable nutrition security crop, one that can mitigate turmoil in world food supply and demand and political instability in some developing countries. Increasingly, the global role of the potato has expanded from a profitable crop in developing countries to a crop providing income and nutrition security in developing ones. This book will appeal to academics and students of crop sciences, but also policy makers and other stakeholders involved in the potato and its contribution to humankind’s food security.




Revitalizing Indian Agriculture and Boosting Farmer Incomes


Book Description

This open access book provides an evidence-based roadmap for revitalising Indian agriculture while ensuring that the growth process is efficient, inclusive, and sustainable, and results in sustained growth of farmers’ incomes. The book, instead of looking for global best practices and evaluating them to assess the possibility of replicating these domestically, looks inward at the best practices and experiences within Indian states, to answer questions such as -- how the agricultural growth process can be speeded up and made more inclusive, and financially viable; are there any best practices that can be studied and replicated to bring about faster growth in agriculture; does the prior hypothesis that rapid agricultural growth can alleviate poverty faster, reduce malnutrition, and augment farmers’ incomes stand? To answer these questions, the book follows four broad threads -- i) Linkage between agricultural performance, poverty and malnutrition; ii) Analysing the historical growth performance of agricultural sector in selected Indian states; iii) Will higher agricultural GDP necessarily result in higher incomes for farmers; iv) Analysing the current agricultural policy environment to evaluate its efficiency and efficacy, and consolidate all analysis to create a roadmap. These are discussed in 12 chapters, which provide a building block for the concluding chapter that presents a roadmap for revitalising Indian agriculture while ensuring growth in farmers’ incomes.