About the Book “Agriculture is a profession of hope”,
someone said. Man has landed on moon and has sent unmanned spacecrafts to Mars
and Venus and transforming lives by fascinating technological innovations, yet
he cannot shower rains at will, cannot prevent droughts or floods or even
predict them with certainty. Risk and uncertainty are considered ubiquitous and
varied in agriculture resulting from a range of factors including the vagaries
of weather, the unpredictable nature of biological processes, the pronounced
seasonality of production and market cycles etc.
Weather forecasts are probabilities and
projections based on improved technologies but not reachable to many small and
marginal farmers. But still vast majority of the people in the country continue
in farming with a hope that they would get better production and better prices.
Agriculture continues to play a major role, in spite of declining share in
India’s overall economy. Even today, as we entered the new millennium, the
situation is still the same, with almost the entire economy being sustained by
agriculture, which is the mainstay of the villages. Although agriculture
contributes less than 15% of India’s GDP, its importance in the country’s’
economic, social and political fabric goes well beyond this indicator. The
rural areas are still home to 75 percent of the India’s 1.2 billion people, a
large number of whom are poor. Most of the rural poor depend on rain-fed
agriculture and fragile forests for their livelihoods. Agricultural risk is
associated with negative outcomes that stem from imperfectly predictable
climatic and price variables. Weather and climate are major risks and
uncertainty factors impacting agriculture production. Market risk is due
accessibility of inputs, uncertainty of prices in buying inputs, selling farm
output, dairy and livestock products etc.
Risk management is very critical to the
success of agriculture, and yet there is a lack of tools used to manage risk as
well as a lack of understanding of the tools themselves. Though, risk is an
integral part of agriculture and farmers make risky decisions every day and
confront different types of risk, changes in the risk environment and available
tools to manage the risk make it a compelling reason to engage in risk
management education.
This volume is outcome of selected papers
presented at the National Seminar on “Agricultural Risk Management” organized
during 3-4 January 2014 by Centre for Good Governance (CGG) in association with
National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRD&PR).
The purpose of this comprehensive
edited book of selected articles is to contribute to improved agricultural
decision making by explaining what can be done in risk analysis and management.
It should prove useful not only to practitioners and scientists involved in
agriculture, water and land use, environmental management but also to policy
makers in formulating appropriate strategies in agricultural risk management in
India and elsewhere. Further, we hope that this volume will contribute to
productive policy change to formulate sustainable risk mitigation strategies in
agriculture leading to increased farm income.
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Contents 1. Introduction:
Agricultural Risk Management, 2. Challenges and Strategies in making Small and Marginal Farm Holdings Sustainable and Profitable, 3. Climate Change and Sustainable Agriculture: Enabling Small
Farmers Coping with Climate Change, 4. Profitability and
Sustainability of Small and Marginal Farmers through Integrated Farming System
and Commodity based Associations, 5. Key Issues and
Strategies for making Small Holder Farming Profitable and Sustainable, 6. Paradigm Shift in
Livelihood Pattern of Small and Marginal Farmers in Andhra Pradesh, 7. Small
Farmer Organisation in Rainfed Regions of India: A Study of Organization and
Performance of Producer Companies, 8. Small Farmers,
Prosperous Farmers in India: Evidence and Lessons from Case Studies, 9. Challenges
and Strategies in making Small and Marginal Farm Holdings Sustainable and
Profitable, 10.
Institutions and Support Systems for Inclusive Agricultural
Development,
11. Re-examining Farmer and Agriculture Worker Categories in
the Context of Implications of MGNREGS on Small and Marginal Holdings, 12. Crop
Insurance as a Risk Management Strategy in Rainfed Agriculture in Odisha, 13. An
Insight on Farmers’ Willingness to Pay for Risk Management: A Case of Weather
based Crop Insurance,
14. Risk and Insurance in Andhra Pradesh Agriculture – A
Disaggregate Analysis,
15. Smallholders in Indian Agriculture-Crop Diversification -
underlying Factors-Policy Implications, 16. ICT as Helping Tool to
Improve Supply Chain Network in Farmers Club, 17. Towards Measuring
Interventions in Rainfed Areas, 18. Performance of Kisan Credit Card in
Andhra Pradesh,
19. A Graphical Analysis of Terms of Trade between Agriculture
and Non-Agriculture Sectors of Indian Economy Since 1950’s To 2006 Does Trends
in Agricultural Terms of Trade Reflect the True State of Agriculture?, 20. Risk
and Risk Management in Rainfed Agriculture, 21. A Pilot Project in Andhra
Pradesh Agricultural Risk Management.
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About
the Author
Devi
Prasad Juvvadi Prof. Devi Prasad Juvvadi is Director,
Agriculture Management at Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad with about
three decades of experience in agricultural research, teaching and consultancy.
After completing his B.Sc (Agric) at ANGRAU, he pursued Masters in Soil Science
at American University of Beirut and advanced training in soil science at
Oxford University, England. He worked as
Assistant Professor at American University of Beirut for a decade and adjunct
to US-Saudi Joint Commission on Economic Co-operation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
He worked as Consultant to various international organizations in Middle East,
Africa and Europe.
Prof.Devi Prasad worked as Team Leader for
Agriculture Finance Corporation’s project on A.P. Community Based Tank
Management Project and Team Leader for External M&E of A.P.Well, a
Netherlands supported project. For the last decade he is involved in various
projects with Centre for Good Governance including change and service delivery
projects in agriculture under a DFID supported programme. He has been trainer,
resource person and consultant to many organizations including DMRL, DRDL,
MIDHANI, NAARM, MANAGE, SAMETI, EEI, SBI, ITC, APWELL, AFC etc. Prof. Devi
Prasad has published widely in international journals, published bulletins,
review articles, contributed to English and Telugu news papers on agriculture
and presented papers in various international conferences. Prof.Devi Prasad
travelled widely in over 26 countries in all the continents.
Gangaiah Bollempalli
Dr. Gangaiah Bollempalli is Additional
Director General Centre for Good Governance. After completing his BA in
Economics, he completed MA in Economics-
Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, M. Phil;
International Studies- School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Ph.D.,
Economics at Osmania University. Before
joining CGG he was Economic and Statistical Adviser (Additional
Secretary), Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, New Delhi .
In the Government worked in Planning
Commission and other key central ministries of Agriculture, Rural Development,
Urban Development and Small Scale Industries and exposed to working of macro
and micro level programmes/project interventions. Also worked in Rural
Development Ministry for four years handling support to micro-level
interventions of economic and social empowerment, community mobilization in six
major states of India
Besides long experience in the Governmen,
he has worked in International donor funded projects of DFID, Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation and Global Fund on HIV, TB, and Malaria for about 7 years in
health sector covering aspects of HIV/AID prevention, care social marketing and
health advocacy.
He was involved in consultancy studies for
several international agencies like World Bank, UNIFEM, ILO, UNAIDS, DFID,
NOVIB, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Deutsch Bank Asia Foundation,
Humanist Association of Norway, Family Health International on wide ranging
subjects including Health, HIV/AIDS, Gender, Irrigation, Livelihoods and
Migration, Poverty and social reform. Dr.Gangaiah published several articles
and research papers on agriculture, health,evaluation, ecological economics.
K. Suman Chandra
Dr. K. Suman Chandra is Professor&
Head, Centre for Agrarian Studies and Disaster Mitigation, National Institute
of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Hyderabad. His areas of specialization
include agrarian reforms in general and tenancy reforms in particular. A
sociologist by training, he has extensive field work experience which served as
the basis for training rural development functionaries over the last two
decades. To his credit there are four books and several articles published in
reputed journals.
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