Changing Contours Of Indian Agriculture

This book presents an extensive study on India’s agricultural and nonfarm sectors, examining prices, investments and policies, and suggesting various essential technological changes. It offers appropriate financial, institutional, and policy frameworks that can help to sustain agricultural growth and augment farmers’ incomes across geographical locations. Further, it addresses agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction through multiple pathways that also tackle varied geographical locations, making it a highly useful guide to understanding the changing contours in agriculture and rural areas across the country and among rural households with various social and economic backgrounds.

Commemorative volume published on the 75th birth anniversary of V.S. Vyas, economist from Rajasthan, India; most of the papers presented at a seminar held at Jaipur in February 2008.

Contributed articles on economic aspects of agriculture in India.

Using the decennial All-India Debt and Investment Survey from 1981-82 to 2012-13, this paper delves into the spatial and temporal trends in private fixed capital expenditure and its composition, among rural households in India. We also assess its relationship with public investment in agriculture. Amidst sizeable ups and downs, the magnitude and rate of growth in private investment in agriculture has gained momentum from 2000s except in Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir. An increasing preference of farmers to invest in residential land and buildings, and that at the cost of asset formation in farm business, is evident in agriculturally advanced states. Within agriculture, relatively higher investments in land improvement, machinery-implements, tractors, and livestock are identified over the period. Importantly, such investments are positively influenced by public investments in agriculture and irrigation in the high and low income states and also by public spending on input subsidy in the middle and low income states. An increase in public expenditure that is well targeted and is commensurate with farmers’ investment portfolio would reinforce a complementary relation between the two across-the-board. The impact of terms of trade on private investment though positive turns out to be statistically insignificant. Land acts as a constraint, indicating need for policy interventions that augment crop yield and can bring remunerative prices to farmers. A continued effort to improve the outreach of formal financial institutions for credit is warranted for higher private capital formation.

Divided into three parts - Rationale and Extent of Agricultural Diversification, Nature and Problems of Agricultural Diversification, and Food and Livelihood Security through Agricultural Diversification, this edited book examines various aspects of agricultural diversification in Eastern India. In recent years, Indian agriculture has been diversifying from cereals to high-value crops and livestock products in accordance with the changing consumption patterns. As such, it faces the challenges of a new economic regime, besides the usual problems of rising population, unemployment and poverty, declining investments in the agriculture sector and degradation of natural resources. These issues are discussed in the book in light of the significant transformation in the economic structure of the Indian economy from agriculture to non-agriculture (industry and services) and changing cropping pattern from cereals to non-cereals, in accordance with the changing consumption pattern. The book would be of interest to teachers, researchers, policymakers, students and general readers having an interest in agricultural development in India.

The present study analyzes temporal and spatial trends in public expenditure on agriculture and irrigation in India. It links sub-period growth performance with expenditure based on structural breaks. The analysis pertains to the period between 1992/1993 and 2019/2020. This is a period that has witnessed a stagnation, and even a decrease in public expenditure in the agricultural sector and a resulting deceleration in productivity growth, which was then followed by a revival in both expenditure and output. Significantly expenditure on subsidies of key inputs, viz. fertilizer, irrigation, and power, however, has not incentivized farmers to increase output and productivity to achieve a higher rate of growth. Empirical findings based on the first-difference regression analysis confirm that agricultural growth is determined by public expenditure on agriculture and irrigation; across the states, however, input subsidies alone are shown to be less, or not at all, efficient. Funds to agriculture and irrigation should be increased in proportion to their contribution to the state domestic product, and input subsidies should be rationalized by weighing their positive welfare effects against their cost to the exchequer.

Presenting Professor V. S. Vyas's approach to the major national and global challenges facing Indian agriculture, this book makes available his research and writing on how policy interventions, technological changes, and institutional developments are impacting the economy of those directly dependent on it for their livelihood.