This study measures the willingness of male and female farmers to pay for climate-smart technology in rice. Rice is the most important crop in India in terms ofarea, production,and consumption. It is also the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions among all crops. Direct-seeded rice (DSR)with drum seeder, a climate-smart technology, requires less labor and water and is more climate friendly than transplanted rice; yet,its adoption is slow in India. Theauthors of this studycarried out a discrete choice experiment with 666 farmers from the Palghar and Thane districts of Maharashtra to measure their willingness to pay for drum seeders—a key piece of equipment for adopting DSR. Both male and female farmers were surveyed to capture the heterogeneity in their valuation of the key attributes of drumseeders. Although both male and female farmers prefer cheaper drum seeders, the marginal valuation of different attributes of the drum seeder varies by the farmers’ gender. The authors also used the Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), to collect self-reported data on the role and say of women in agriculture. The respective gender roles in the family and on the farm seem to explain some of this difference. Men have a greater say over how the family spends the cash. Accordingly, men tend to have a higher willingness to pay for attributes that increase income (increase in yield) or reduce cash costs (reduction in the seedrate). Women contribute a large share of the labor for transplanting rice, much of whichis unpaid work on family farms. Not surprisingly, therefore, women seem to value labor saving significantly more than their male counterparts. Further, theWEAI data show that although men in the family have more say, women do have an influence on decisions regarding crop production and the adoption of new technologies,to an extent. Therefore, to enhance the adoption of drum seeders, the product designers and extension workers should also target women

This paper studies the high adoption of Pusa 44, a long-duration and old rice variety cultivated in Punjab, despite the availability of new short-duration varieties and the overall technological advancement of agriculture. We use farm-household data from a primary survey conducted in 2016-17. Pusa 44 yields on average 2.5 quintals higher per hectare than competing short-duration variety PR 121. It also consumes 16 percent additional water because of its longer duration. As energy for groundwater irrigation is provided tariff-free by the state, Pusa 44 farmers obtain higher net returns even though they pump additional groundwater. Consequently, they have little economic incentive to switch to new short-duration varieties. This varietal stickiness is a pressing policy issue considering the ongoing groundwater crisis in the state. We show that Punjab currently incurs an additional energy-subsidy cost of US$ 49 million per annum on irrigating Pusa 44. Future costs will continue to multiply unless farmers are incentivized to switch to short-duration rice varieties.

Despite a growing dairy industry in India, farmers’ lack of access to organized markets and institutional credit remains one of the major hindrances in improving the scale and productivity of dairying. Using data from a survey of 612 households from the state of Punjab, India, this paper evaluates farmers’ choices of dairy value chains and their financing mechanisms. The study finds that 62 percent of the sample farmers representing 69 percent of the total milk sales are connected with formal value chains driven by cooperatives, multinational companies and private domestic processors. Small dairy farmers are associated more with informal value chains but they are not excluded from the formal value chains. The performance of different value chains in terms of productivity and profitability of dairying is almost on par. Also, there is hardly any difference in the milk price offered by formal and informal buyers pointing towards milk market being competitive. More than half of the farmers borrow credit both from within and outside the chain for dairying related activities. Chain-based financing is restricted to only one-fourth of the borrowers and mostly to those associated with informal value chains. Financing by commercial banks and other financial institutions is limited to only 9 percent of the borrowers, mainly larger farmers. The socially-disadvantaged and smallholder farmers are often neglected in institutional lending because of their lack of physical assets to use as collateral against loans. Value chain approach, due to its product market orientation, can serve as an entry point for financial institutions to improve their outreach to smallholders. The innovative financial products, such as ‘dairy credit card’ and ‘contract as collateral’ would enable them to adopt yield-enhancing technology and inputs and also to scale up their dairy activity.

Zero tillage (ZT) for wheat is one of the most widely adopted resource-conserving technologies in the rice-wheat systems in northern India. In areas of Haryana with rice-wheat systems, 36.5 percent of all farmers practice ZT on 35 percent of their wheat area. Yet the literature measuring the impact of ZT on farmers’ fields is scarce. This study fills this gap by using the data collected from a random sample of 717 farmers from 50 villages in 10 districts of Haryana. It applies the difference-in-differences method to five-year recall data on wheat yields in ZT and conventionally tilled plots of land to quantify the crop loss due to unseasonal rains right before wheat harvests in March 2015. The results reveal significantly lower wheat yield losses in the ZT plots than in the conventionally tilled plots. On average, farmers suffered yield losses ranging between 3.73 and 4.53 quintals per hectare in 2015 due to unseasonal rains. The loss was lower by 1.05–1.10 quintals per hectare in ZT plots. The analysis clearly shows that adoption of ZT helped in reducing crop loss in wheat by 24–28 percent, valued at 1,523–1,595 Indian rupees (Rs.) per hectare (approximately US$22.50 per hectare). The loss avoided due to ZT is nearly equal to the prevailing rental rate of the ZT machine (Rs. 1,500 per hectare) in Haryana. Climate models suggest that the incidence of short-duration acute hydro meteorological events is likely to increase in years to come. Such events are hard to predict and prepare for, and dealing with them hinges mainly on disaster relief. However, our results show that adoption of ZT is one possible way to reduce potential loss from some of these weather events and that ZT is therefore well characterized as a climate-smart technology.

In this paper we apply duration analysis to study the factors driving the speed of adoption of a popular Basmati rice variety called Pusa 1121. We use data from a primary survey on variety adoption and crop economics conducted in 2017. The sample comprises of 1305 Basmati growing farmers from the north Indian states of Haryana and Punjab. Pusa 1121 was adopted rapidly by 60% farmers between 5 and 10 years from its release in 2005. Results from the duration analysis highlight the key role of superior quality traits of Pusa 1121 and assured market demand. Access to varietal information from extension agents also shortened farmers’ time to adoption. Moreover, we show that early adopters of Pusa 1121 positively influenced other farmers’ speed of adoption within their village network.