EVALUATION OF INDIAN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH

Objective:
The primary objective of the project is to investigate the magnitude, causes and consequences of India’s agricultural productivity growth. The focus will on developing price and quantity datasets for both outputs and inputs between 1980 and 2008 across the entire Indian agricultural sector. The desired aggregation of the output and input series would be at the state level (19 major states of India). The output series should include cros, livestock and feasible aquaculture. The primary productivity determinates of interest are national and international agricultural research, transportation, infrastructure, agricultural extension, services, government policies and human capital. The input series should include all the measurable inputs such as labor, land fertilizers, pesticide, feed, seed, and farm capital. A natural resource stock including information or ground water and irrigation and an expanded capital stock including agricultural machinery, farm structures and tree capital would be significant contributions.

Approach:
Research need to be conducted on national and sub-national level. Methods will include stochastic frontier techniques to evaluate technology growth  in the major crops and technical efficiency changes at the state levels and index number theory to allow for intra-national evaluation and comparison of total factor productivity growth.

Timeline: August 2010-September 2012

Geographical Coverage : India