Abstract
India’s agricultural sector has made significant progress in the production of food grains overtime. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the production of food grains has more than doubled between 1970−1971 and 2013−2014 from 108.4 million tons to 265.0 million tons. Increased production entails increase in marketed surplus available to the non-producing population. This also indicates among others, technical progress, development of markets, market intelligence and better infrastructure facilities. In India, although the estimation of marketed surplus of food grains is a well-researched area, it continues to draw attention of the researchers due to emergence of new marketing institutions, changes in cropping pattern, new production arrangements and changes in consumption basket. Therefore, any contribution to this particular field in agricultural economics is welcome and of course, readers would expect something new to what is already available in the literature.
The book under review has four chapters including introduction, summary and conclusion. This book is an outcome of a research project undertaken by the author. The organisation of the chapters reveals that it still reads like a project report with fragmented issues. Chapter 1 discusses objectives, methodology and basic theoretical concepts. For any field-survey-based study, the adoption of the appropriate sampling method for selection of farmer households is important for drawing meaningful inferences about the population. Although quota sampling is a non-random procedure, at least it ensures that the number of sample farmers drawn is proportional to the size of farmers’ population in different farm size categories. The negligible proportion or even non-representation of marginal farmers and small farmers for the focus crops in the sample is baffling. Discussion on economic theories related to agricultural marketing is useful. However, readers will slightly get disappointed with the casual presentation of figures without specific title and serial number, and lack of corresponding references to these figures in the text. Relevance of theoretical discussions to the empirical analysis should be have been demonstrated appropriately. The product transformation curve shows the choice between production of number of tractors and number of cars, but discussion in the text pertains to wheat and bajra.
India’s agricultural price policy aims at balancing the interests of producers and consumers. Historically, evidence shows that price policy has been more biased towards consumers than producers, especially the marginal and small farmers. Input subsidies and output price support measures are the important policy instruments that the government of India uses to support the farmers. Theoretical arguments that price support may increase price of agricultural commodities and government’s efforts to procure whatever the quantity required to keep the market price at the level of support price require empirical verification. This is important for the reason that government does not buy up the entire marketed surplus of all the commodities from all the producing regions.
Chapter 2 provides an overview of Gujarat agriculture. The description of the state of agriculture and patterns in agricultural growth is useful. The recent debate on miracles of the performance of Gujarat agriculture has been touched upon. However, discussions related to land alienation, irrigation development and farm energy supply could have enriched this chapter. The state government has implemented many institutional innovations for improving resource use efficiency. Assessing the contribution of these experiments to agricultural development will be a worth doing exercise and will also suggest ways to replicate such innovations elsewhere depending upon institutional conditions.
Results from the analysis of field survey data are presented in Chapter 3. Characteristics of the sample households have been discussed. Disposal of agricultural produce and crop retention pattern have been presented neatly. The section on crop losses by agricultural operations and mode of transportation is quite useful. This chapter finally provides the estimated marketable surplus and marketed surplus ratios for tur, bajra and wheat in Gujarat. Overall, this book contains useful information about the estimation of marketed surplus and factors influencing marketable surplus of important crops in Gujarat. This book will be useful for the students and researchers engaged in the field of agricultural economics.