India’s Agrarian Crisis and Corporate-Led Contract Farming: Socio-economic Implications for Smallholder Producers

The paper discusses India’s agrarian crisis and the role of corporate-led contract farming in addressing these crisis. A two-stage Heckman model was used to explain determinants of participation in contract farming, and whether participation in contract farming affects farm income. The results indicate that contract farming has a positive impact on crop productivity and farm income. The socio-economic factors that influenced participation in contract farming were education, age, farm size, access to institutional credit, source of off-farm income and membership to an organization. Factors related to the likelihood of participation in contract farming slightly differed from the factors affecting farm income.Agrarian crisis, Smallholder producer, Corporate-led contract farming, Agricultural Produce Marketing (APMC) Act, Heckman model, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Marketing, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Q10, Q13,

India’s Agrarian Crisis and Smallholder Producers’ Participation in New Farm Supply Chain Initiatives: A Case Study of Contract Farming

Indian agriculture is at crossroads and one of the major challenges is to reverse deceleration in agricultural growth. Main reason for deceleration in agricultural growth is declining investment particularly public investment in agriculture research and development and irrigation, combined with inefficiency of institutions providing inputs and services including rural credit and extension. Other factors such as land fragmentation, out-dated tenancy laws, lack of modern market and rural infrastructure, inappropriate input pricing policies, etc. are also responsible for agrarian and ecological crisis in the country. The crisis of stagnation in agriculture needs urgent attention. The government has renewed focus on agriculture and promoting public-private partnership to accelerate growth in the rural economy. Many Indian and multi-national agribusiness companies have entered Indian agribusiness sector. The central government has also initiated reforms in outdated laws such as Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, Essential Commodities Act (ECA), and given some incentives like waiver of market fee, rural development tax, etc. for companies making investment in agribusiness sector. The central as well as state governments are promoting involvement of corporate sector in agriculture through contract farming with a view to enable farmer to have access to better inputs, extension services and credit from agribusiness companies. Contract farming is also supposed to eliminate and/or reduce markets and price risks, which farmers face. However, it all depends on the nature of contracts, legislation for regulation of contract farming, enforcement, dispute resolution mechanisms, etc. This paper tries to understand socio-economic implications of corporate-led initiatives in agriculture (mainly contract farming) in the state of Punjab, which has more experience in contract farming compared to other states. The results indicate that contract farming is a good initiative for medium and large-scale farmers producing for the market but the long-term success of such initiatives will depend on how a large number of small and marginal farmers can be linked to restructured markets under changing market and policy environment. The study points out that it is important to provide an integrated set of services including credit and not just seed and limited extension services. Partnership between public and private sector companies/organizations is needed in order to provide these integrated services. More important is to improve bargaining power of smallholder producers while also reducing transaction costs for companies through promotion of producers’ groups/association/cooperatives. Small farmers will be able to effectively participate in the changing markets and establish links with new market chains (supermarkets, agribusiness companies, processors, exporters, etc.) only if they have access to basic infrastructure, quality inputs and services and are organized.

Trade liberalization, market reforms and competitiveness of Indian dairy sector

From chronic shortages of milk, India has emerged today as the largest producer of milk in the world crossing 80 million tonnes. This has been achieved largely through a smallholder economy in which "Operation Flood", one of the world's largest dairy development programmes, played an important role. All this happened largely under autarkic framework and regulated public policy dictated by import-substitution strategy. Until 1991, the Indian dairy industry was highly regulated and protected through quantitative restrictions (QRs) and stringent licensing provisions. Since early 1990s, India embarked upon liberal policy framework, which got reinforced with the signing of Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) in 1994. This opening-up increasingly exposed the Indian dairy sector to the global markets, which in-turn are distorted by export subsidies, domestic support and prohibitive tariffs in developed countries. This raises several issues: Will the Indian dairy sector survive in the new brave world of liberalization? What are the options for India in the coming rounds of multilateral trade negotiations, given scores of distortions that plague the world dairy markets? What sort of domestic reforms are required in the Indian dairy sector that could promote its competitiveness in a fast globalizing world? This study responds to these issues by empirically mapping the competitiveness of Indian dairy sector over the period 1975-2000 and delineating policy options for international negotiations and more importantly, domestic policy reforms, given India's commitments to the WTO.World Trade Organization ,trade liberalization ,Dairy products industry ,livestock ,

High-Value Agriculture in India: Past Trends and Future Prospects

Given the declining share of traditional agricultural commodities in production, consumption and trade, horticulture and other non-traditional high-value agriculture represent an important area of potential income growth in rural areas. The high-value agriculture-led-growth strategy also provides significant scope for achieving greater commercialization of smallholder agriculture. Despite the potential, the contribution of high-value agricultural exports is still small but increasing. This paper examines the past and existing performance and identifies likely challenges and opportunities for high-value-agriculture in the country. The findings of the study reveal a structural shift in consumption pattern away from cereals to high-value agricultural commodities, both in rural and urban areas, in the last two decades. This shift in dietary patterns across states and income classes is also observed. The results reveal a relatively strong and growing demand for livestock products and fruits and vegetables in both rural and urban areas. The average expenditure as well as share of beverages has increased by about six times in both rural and urban areas. Due to shift in demand pattern towards high-value crops, the farmers have also responded to market signals and gradually shifting production-mix to meet the growing demand for high-value commodities. This is reflected in the changing share of high value crops in total value of output from agriculture. The share of high-value commodities/products (fruits and vegetables, livestock products, fisheries) increased from 37.3 percent in Triennium Ending (TE) 1983-84 to 41.3 percent in TE 1993.94 and reached a level of 47.4 percent in TE 2007-08. The trade in high-value products has also increased during the last decade. Overall, fresh fruits and vegetables exports represent a very small share of domestic production and agricultural exports but have increased significantly. During the 2000s, the growth rate in value of exports of rice, sugar, marine products, tea, etc. declined, while high-value exports (fruits and vegetables, floriculture, meat, processed fruit juices) grew by about 18 percent annually. However, Indian exports face many constraints in major importing countries on account of quality and food safety issues. The rising demand for high-value commodities, particularly fruits and vegetables and livestock products has led to an increase in imports of many commodities like fresh fruits. While there is an opportunity for increasing exports of high-value products but there is a huge and increasing domestic demand which needs to be tapped. The study suggests that a future road map for high-value agriculture development should focus on investment in technology development and dissemination, basic infrastructure, improvement of technical capacity of producers and other players in the value chain, institutional support in core functions of production, logistics and marketing through concerted public sector support and active public-private partnerships, and provision of quality inputs, in particular planting materials for fruits and seeds for vegetables.

Longterm schedule optimization of an underground mine under geotechnical and ventilation constraints using SOT

Long-term mine scheduling is complex as well time and labour intensive. Yet in the mainstream of the mining industry, there is no computing program for schedule optimization and, in consequence, schedules are still created manually. The objective of this study was to compare a base case schedule generated with the Enhanced Production Scheduler (EPS®) and an optimized schedule generated with the Schedule Optimization Tool (SOT). The intent of having an optimized schedule is to improve the project value for underground mines. This study shows that SOT generates mine schedules that improve the Net Present Value (NPV) associated with orebody extraction. It does so by means of systematically and automatically exploring the options to vary the sequence and timing of mine activities, subject to constraints. First, a conventional scheduling method (EPS®) was adopted to identify a schedule of mining activities that satisfied basic sets of constraints, including physical adjacencies of mining activities and operational resource capacity. Additional constraint scenarios explored were geotechnical and ventilation, which negatively effect development rates. Next, the automated SOT procedure was applied to determine whether the schedules could be improved upon. It was demonstrated that SOT permitted the rapid re-assessment of project value when new constraint scenarios were applied. This study showed that the automated schedule optimization added value to the project every time it was applied. In addition, the reoptimizing and re-evaluating was quickly achieved. Therefore, the tool used in this research produced more optimized schedules than those produced using conventional scheduling methods.Master of Applied Science (MASc) in Natural Resources Engineerin

Pittendrigh: the darwinian clock-watcher

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