100 million tonnes of cereals are missing… every year
In an earlier I4I post, Drèze and Oldiges drew attention to India’s ‘cereal gap’ – a large difference between net availability of cereals and household consumption. In this post, they use rec...
- Jean Drèze Christian Oldiges
- 05 July, 2024
- Perspectives
The ‘cereal gap’: Looming issues in India’s foodgrain policy
Cereal production in India recently crossed 300 million tonnes for the first time. In this post, Drèze and Oldiges point out that a major gap has emerged between the net availability of cereals and h...
- Jean Drèze Christian Oldiges
- 18 April, 2024
- Perspectives
Watering the seeds of the rural economy: Evidence from groundwater irrigation in India
Over time, technological advancements accompanied with government energy subsidies have made groundwater the single largest source of irrigation in India. This study evaluates the impact of access to ...
- Camille Boudot-Reddy André Butler
- 12 January, 2024
- Articles
Land misallocation and industrial development
Although a large share of land in India is used for cultivation, large tracts of this are unproductive and produce low crop yields. In this post, Dasgupta and Rao explain their calculations to determi...
- Kunal Dasgupta Rahul Rao
- 07 February, 2023
- Articles
Irrigation and the spatial pattern of local economic development in India
Irrigation projects across India are intended to boost agricultural productivity and rural development. In this post, Blakeslee et al. study the long-run effects of access to irrigation on the composi...
- David Blakeslee Aaditya Dar Ram Fishman Samreen Malik Heitor Pellegrina Karan Singh Bagavathinathan
- 25 January, 2023
- Articles
The long-run effects of agricultural productivity gains: Evidence from irrigation canals in India
Evidence from canals in India shows that labour mobility is a key channel to agricultural growth. This article shows that villages with access to canal water have persistently higher agricultural yiel...
- Samuel Asher Alison Campion Douglas Gollin Paul Novosad
- 21 October, 2022
- Articles
The 10,000 FPOs scheme ignores women farmers
In this piece, Shilpa Vasavada puts forth her concern that if we don’t revisit the new Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) guidelines with a gender lens, women in the agriculture sector will be left...
- Shilpa Vasavada
- 04 October, 2022
- Perspectives
Digital agricultural extension: Stimulating or supplanting farmers’ interactions?
Governments and non-profit organisations are increasingly reliant on using digital technologies to deliver information. In the context of agricultural extension in Gujarat, this article looks at wheth...
- A. Nilesh Fernando Renee Yaseen
- 18 August, 2022
- Articles
Wheat export ban and heat stress: Balancing the trade-off between food security and farmers’ income
The recent imposition of a ban on wheat exports, in a bid to ensure food security, has meant that farmers will not realise the benefits from the recent increase in global wheat prices. In this post, K...
- Suresh Kumar Subhasis Mandal
- 08 June, 2022
- Perspectives
Addressing the economic trade-offs of interlinkages in contemporary agrarian markets
Agrarian markets often see interlinked market transactions – the arhatiya deals with the farmer in both the crop market as a commission agent, and in the credit market as a moneylender. In this post...
- Ritika Bansal Anshuman Kamila Sandeep Kumar
- 06 June, 2022
- Perspectives
Easing contracting frictions with machines: Evidence from Karnataka
Productivity-enhancing technology adoption in agriculture, which makes workers available for other economic sectors, has long been considered essential for economic development. Based on a field exper...
- Julieta Caunedo Namrata Kala
- 21 February, 2022
- Articles
Higher poultry prices and policy (or data) gap
Food and agricultural prices have been rising over the past two years – particularly so for pulses and livestock. In this post, Saini and Das track livestock and feed prices, and identify the key dr...
- Sandip Das Shweta Saini
- 04 October, 2021
- Perspectives
Gendering technological change: Evidence from agricultural mechanisation
Rising mechanisation in Indian agriculture has been accompanied by reduction in farm employment in rural areas, particularly for women. This article shows that the observed 32 percentage point increas...
- Farzana Afridi Monisankar Bishnu Kanika Mahajan
- 14 July, 2021
- Articles
Impact of agricultural reforms in Bihar: Test case for new farm laws
The 2020 farm laws have been opposed by several farmers due to their possible use for corporate takeover of agriculture, removal of APMC mandis, and dilution of minimum support price and public procur...
- Avinash Kishore Prabhat Kishore Devesh Roy Sunil Saroj
- 11 June, 2021
- Articles
Addressing the nutrition crisis: Reflections from Odisha Millets Mission
The state of Odisha has a severe malnutrition problem, and evidence shows that increasing risks of climate change will render the resource-intensive, rice-wheat cropping system unsustainable. In this ...
- Subhodeep Basu Arghadeep Saha Sayantani Sathpathi
- 09 April, 2021
- Notes from the Field
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Climate change and Indian agriculture
Indian agriculture remains vulnerable to the vagaries of weather, and the looming threat of climate change may expose this vulnerability further. This article presents findings from a study that uses ...
- Siddharth Hari Parth Khare Arvind Subramanian
- 16 August, 2018
- Articles
India's farm crisis: Decades old and with deep roots
In this Perspectives piece, Prof. Himanshu argues that the crisis in Indian agriculture today is not a new one; it goes back many years. Therefore, the problems of farmers cannot be addressed by the b...
- Himanshu .
- 12 April, 2019
- Perspectives
How new technologies can raise farm productivity
Lele and Goswami discuss the potential of new technologies in raising farm productivity, and the challenges involved in turning the power of information and other technologies into a farmer-friendly t...
- Sambuddha Goswami Uma Lele
- 06 December, 2017
- Articles