Farm Income Stabilization In Dry Farming Areas

Quite a substantial area in India comes under dryland agriculture. It contributes about 60 million tones of foodgrains thereby constituting nearly 45 percent of the total annual foodgrains production in the country. It marks a descernible impact of dryland agriculture on national food front. The knowledge of resources and their availability, socio-economic constraints in the efficient allocation of such resources, adoption of generated agricultural technology for increasing production, employment and income stabilization in dryland agriculture in exceedingly pertinent. The author has elaborately discussed these issues in this volume. The salient features of dry farming areas with careful analysis of the resources are discussed in the beginning. By using time series data for a considerable period of 81 years the rainfall characteristics of dry farming areas are analysed. The author, then identifies the important crops of the area. By analysing the time series data, he compares the productivity of these crops for two periods i.e. before the advent of green revolution and after green revolution. The variability in yields of the crops has then been studied. Similarly the variability in prices of these crops is also studied. With this picture of the dry farming areas, attempts have been made to develop farm plans with the help of Linear Programming Technique. The impact of the optimal plan on farm income and employment is discussed in detail. An attempt has also been made to measure the variability in farm income with the adoption of optimal plan. To reduce the income variability he finally suggests some strategies which will prove fruitful to all those concerned with the subject.