Agricultural Economics

The study aims to examine Resource use efficiency of banana cultivation in Bharuch District of South Gujarat. The analysis of Cobb-Douglas production function fitted and in case of small farmers revealed that among the selected variable of banana, human labour and irrigation were found positive and significant at 5 per cent level of significant. In case of PPC (Plant protection Chemical) and chemical fertilizer the regression coefficient was negative. The explanatory variable like tractor charge, human labour, FYM and irrigation were found positive and significant at 5 per cent level of significant in case of medium farms. In case of PPC (Plant protection Chemical) the regression coefficient was negative. The variables of human labour, FYM and irrigation were found positive and significant at 5 per cent level of significant in case of large farms. In case of PPC (Plant protection Chemical) the regression coefficient was negative.

Statistical science is concerned with the aspect of theory of design of experiments and sample investigation and drawing valid inferences from using various statistical methods. The statisticians design the experiments, trials and analyze the data and interpret the facts. The statisticians design the experiments, trials and analyze the data and interpret the facts. Statistical design and technique helps to describe the involvement of complex phenomena and behaviour of agricultural growth. The impact of associated factor can be analyzed with the help of simple statistical design, sampling techniques with inferential statistics. The techniques of drawing valid interpretation depend on how the data has been gathered and also depending upon the research objective. This paper describes the basic concept of statistical research design of design of experiment and techniques used for analysis and interpretation of investigations and also discuss the experimental.

Aonla (Emblica officinalis Gaertn) Aonla is indigenous to tropical south-eastern Asia, particularly in central and south India. In India, forests have been the traditional source of aonla fruit for medicinal uses with annual harvests estimated to be about 50,000 tonnes. Increasing demand from industry, especially for ayurvedic formulations, and appreciation of nutraceutical and medicinal properties for home consumption has resulted in the growing of this tree as a cultivated crop. In India, it is estimated that aonla is cultivated on about 91,000 ha, having a production of 9, 89,000 MT (Annon, 2017). The fruit is nutritious and is a rich source of Vitamin“C. Ascorbic acid and other constituents are well retained in dried aonla fruits (Roy, 2000) . The fruit is highly nutritious and is a rich source of pectin, polyphenols apart from ascorbic acid. The fruits are well known for their medicinal properties in curing chronic dysentery, bronchitis, and diabetes in the traditional Indian s...

The present study was undertaken to analyze annual average rainfall in Gujarat in order to classify and define the targeted zones and to know the impact of rainfall variability on agriculture in the state. The results revealed that the Northwest Agro-climatic zone was the most vulnerable zone among all the agro-climatic zones due to extreme deviations in rainfall pattern. This was followed by north Saurashtra, South saurashtra and Middle Gujarat Zone. The southern hills zone had the least per cent of years with extreme deviations. Water management practices such as drip irrigation, deepening wells, constructing check-dams; integrated watershed management as well as insurance coverage and microfinancing facilities have been suggested as mitigation strategies to overcome the adverse impact of rainfall variability on agricultural production.  

Saurashtra is a region of western India, located in the Arabian sea coast of Gujarat state. The rainfall in the southern highlands of Saurashtra and the Gulf of Cambay is approximately 63 cms while the other parts of Saurashtra have a rainfall of less than 63cms. The region is cursed due to constant droughts since several decades. The onset of summer in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat can be a frightening prospect. The rocky terrain of low hills and the semi-arid plains begin to radiate immense heat. Water shortage looms large and the memory of the severe drought of 1999-2000 returns to haunt. The available observational evidence indicates that regional changes in climate, have already affected a diverse set of physical and biological systems in many parts of the world (IPCC, 2001). Therefore, the present study proposes to assess the vulnerability of selected districts in Saurashtra to climate change by the constructing the vulnerability indices during different periods. Furthermore, the study also provides the classification of these districts under different degrees of vulnerability. Agro-Climatic and Physiographic Description of the Saurashtra Region The Saurashtra region consists of seven districts of Gujarat, the district of Rajkot being the industrial hub of the region. It is a peninsula also called Kathiawar after the Kathi Darbar which ruled part of the region once. The peninsula is shared with the Kutch region which occupies the north, Saurashtra forming the southern portion. The Saurashtra region comprises the south western part of Gujarat state and the districts included in this region are Rajkot,

Medicinal and aromatic crops occupy an important position in the socio cultural, spiritual and health aspects of Indian rural population. These have become an integral part of the culture and rituals. Karnataka has one of the richest traditional medicine cultures in India. The demand exceeds the supply of medicinal plants in Karnataka. At present, around 90 per cent of the supply of the raw material is directly from the forest and mostly from outside the State. Cultivation of a few species began only recently and that meets only about 10 percent of the demand. Cultivator to pharmacy and cultivator to pharmacy via trader are the frequently resorted market routes. Karnataka is one of the leading States that has a significant presence of Ayurvedic and Unani manufacturing companies. Presently there are 71 Ayurveda; Unani, homoeopathy and nature cure & yoga colleges in Karnataka. Some of the strengths of medicinal and aromatic crop sector in Karnataka are the existence of deep cultural a...

The demand and supply projections of foodgrain are vital for  agricultural policy parameters to ensure future supply–demand balances. Several studies have forecasted foodgrain demand and supply using varied assumptions. Given the sensitivity of these estimates to the assumptions used, there are wide variations in the projections made by various researchers and inferences about the status of food security in the country. The paper synthesizes the empirical evidence on demand and supply projections of foodgrains at 2020 and concludes that the supply–demand balance would not be very comfortable in the country.

Vulnerability to production and market risks is a dominant feature of agriculture in the developing countries. This happens due to household's limited capacity for ex post risk coping. Ex ante risk reduction and mitigation strategies may enhance their ability to build-up asset base to enable them to escape poverty. This paper delineates the extent of incidence of events that lead to occurrence of environmental, health and economic risks in two high risk prone regions viz. Vidarbha and Marathwada in Maharashtra. An analysis of various strategies that rural households adopt to avoid consumption shortfalls due to income shocks has been carried out empirically using the logit model. The results based on a primary survey of 200 rural households in the region indicate that irregular rainfall along with pest and disease outbreaks before crop harvest are the main sources of environmental risks. The landless, marginal and small farmers are more susceptible to the sources of economic risks compared to the farmers having larger size landholdings. The use of risk management strategies was conditioned by the socioeconomic status of households with poorer households resorting to sell their assets and borrowing to informal sources. The study concludes that in the distressed regions, effective social risk management strategies are imperative to improve the socioeconomic status of rural households.

Vulnerability to production and market risks is a dominant feature of agriculture in the developing countries. This happens due to household's limited capacity for ex post risk coping. Ex ante risk reduction and mitigation strategies may enhance their ability to build-up asset base to enable them to escape poverty. This paper delineates the extent of incidence of events that lead to occurrence of environmental, health and economic risks in two high risk prone regions viz. Vidarbha and Marathwada in Maharashtra. An analysis of various strategies that rural households adopt to avoid consumption shortfalls due to income shocks has been carried out empirically using the logit model. The results based on a primary survey of 200 rural households in the region indicate that irregular rainfall along with pest and disease outbreaks before crop harvest are the main sources of environmental risks. The landless, marginal and small farmers are more susceptible to the sources of economic risks compared to the farmers having larger size landholdings. The use of risk management strategies was conditioned by the socioeconomic status of households with poorer households resorting to sell their assets and borrowing to informal sources. The study concludes that in the distressed regions, effective social risk management strategies are imperative to improve the socioeconomic status of rural households.

The study attempts a quantitative assessment of the impact of recently signed ASEAN-India FTA (AIFTA) for dairy commodities in India. ASEAN is strategically a potential market in dairy for India and our country already stands as net exporter of dairy products in this region. Partial equilibrium model (SMART model) has been used to simulate the likely impact of dairy exports to and imports from ASEAN countries under the proposed tariff reduction schedule of the AIFTA. The SMART model simulations suggest that AIFTA has generated an additional scope for India to increase its dairy exports to ASEAN countries. On the other hand, tariff elimination from India’s side creates little scope for ASEAN nations to expand their shares. The threat of cheap imports competing with the domestic products in the Indian markets is therefore not alarming. However necessary adjustment assistance may be provided to the dairy product manufacturers to counter the competition in the relevant product lines.

In the recent year, pre harvest crop yield forecasting has been a topic of interest for producers, policy makers, government and agricultural related organizations. Pre harvest crop forecasting is important for national food security. Construction of appropriate yield forecast promotes the output of scenario analyses of crop production at a farm level, which enables suitable tactical and strategic decision making by the farmer. Indeed, considerable benefits apply when seasonal forecasting of crop performance is applied across the whole value chain in crop production. Timely and accurate yield forecast is essential for crop production, marketing, storage and transportation decisions as well as for managing the risk associated with these activities. In present manuscript efforts were made for development of pre harvest forecast models by using different statistical approaches viz. multiple linear regression (MLR), discriminant function analysis and ordinal logistic regression. The stu...

The early shoot borer, top borer, root borer, internode borer are major insect occurs in most of the sugarcane growing areas of the Gujarat and cause extensive damage to the sugarcane crop, which leads to losses in the crop yield. The weather discrepancies acting an important role in development of sugarcane insect and pest. The proper management of cropping practices may leads to overcome on it. Therefore it need to develop weather based approaches for forewarning the insect incidence which helps to farmers takes timely control measures to reduce the damage and yield losses due to this borer complex. Current study, relationship between insects incidence with weekly average weather parameters has been workout by using Karl-Pearson’s correlation approach on the 18 years of the data (2000-01 to 2017-18) in the Navsari district. The some of the weather variables were found significantly correlated with insect incidence. The multiple linear regression (MLR) and discriminant function ana...

Availability of food is associated with purchasing power and food insecurity is caused by poverty. The needs of the poor should be protected by improving their purchasing power, through proper planning of agricultural activities for future that can produce more employment and income generation programmes. Around 20.4 per cent of Gujarat's current population does not get enough calories from food as compared to the all-India figure of 13.4 per cent. The problem of food insecurity is basically not found in all sections of the people, rather it is mostly confined to certain marginalized sections. It includes scheduled tribes (STs) as they are socially and economically disadvantaged due to their isolation both geographically as well as culturally from the mainstream population. The attempt has been made to study the major factors governing food security in the Dangs - a tribal district of south Gujarat having 95 per cent scheduled tribe population. Results showed that household size...

Background Onions are economically and nutritionally important vegetable crops. Despite advances in technology and acreage, Indian onion growers face challenges in realizing their full productivity potential. This study examines the technical efficiency of onion growers, the factors influencing it, and the constraints faced by those adopting drip irrigation in the Ghod river basin of western Maharashtra. A sample of 480 farmers including those practicing drip irrigation and those not practicing it, was selected from Junnar, Shirur, Parner, and Shrigonda blocks of the basin. The primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Analytical tools such as the Cobb-Douglas production function (represents technological relationship between multiple inputs and the resulting output), a single-stage stochastic frontier model, the Tobit model, and descriptive statistics were used to assess the technical efficiency of onion production at the farm level. According to the maximum likelihood estimates of the stochastic frontier analysis, drip adopters exhibited a mean technical efficiency of 92%, while for non-adopters it was 65%. It indicates that the use of drip irrigation technology is associated with higher technical efficiency. The association of technical efficiency and socio-economic characters of households showed that education, extension contacts, social participation, and use of information sources had a positive influence on technical efficiency, while family size had a negative influence on the drip irrigation adopters. For non-drip adopters, significant positive effects were observed for landholding, extension contact, and information source use. The major constraints faced by drip system adopters included a lack of knowledge about the proper operating techniques for drip systems and the cost of maintenance. The differences with inputs associated with two irrigation methods showed that the response of inputs to increase onion yield is greater for farmers who use drip irrigation than for farmers who do not, and are a result of the large differences in the technical efficiencies. These inefficiencies and other limitations following the introduction of drip irrigation, such as lack of knowledge about the proper operations, need to be addressed through tailored training for farmers and further interventions.

Mango on an average account approximately 75 per cent of total production quantity.  India is the largest mango producer, accounting for about half of the world-wide mango production. Forecasting of area, production and price fluctuations are the key to provide support in decision making and proper planning for sustainable growth of farmers and other people who are dependent on horticulture. The prices of mango are affected by cultivated area and yield of mango but in other ways pre or post-harvest management also affects it. The problems regarding the price fluctuations arise due to seasonality in arrival and its perishable nature. Therefore, the present study was carried out with time series intervention modelling in forecasting area, productivity and prices of mangoes. In the current investigation, simple exponential smoothing (SES) implemented to develop the forecasting models for area and productivity of mango. Under the SES, the error measurements at different values of alpha ...

The analysis of prices and market arrivals over time is important for formulating a sound agricultural price policy. Fluctuations in market arrivals largely contribute to price instability. In order to devise the appropriate ways and means for reducing the price fluctuations of agricultural commodities, there is a need to have a thorough understanding of the price behavior over time.Forecasting the price of agricultural commodities, presents some unique challenges such as data quality issues, weather aberrations, high fluctuations, price variations across neighboring marketplaces, etc. On the demand side, the instability in the prices of agricultural commodities is influenced by a number of factors such as annual variation in production, low price elasticity of demand and seasonality of agricultural production.The study relied upon the secondary time series data on monthly market prices and arrivals of Okra collected from the Agricultural Produce Market Committee, Surat. Analysis wa...