This open access book provides an evidence-based roadmap for revitalising Indian agriculture while ensuring that the growth process is efficient, inclusive, and sustainable, and results in sustained growth of farmers’ incomes. The book, instead of looking for global best practices and evaluating them to assess the possibility of replicating these domestically, looks inward at the best practices and experiences within Indian states, to answer questions such as -- how the agricultural growth process can be speeded up and made more inclusive, and financially viable; are there any best practices that can be studied and replicated to bring about faster growth in agriculture; does the prior hypothesis that rapid agricultural growth can alleviate poverty faster, reduce malnutrition, and augment farmers’ incomes stand? To answer these questions, the book follows four broad threads -- i) Linkage between agricultural performance, poverty and malnutrition; ii) Analysing the historical growth performance of agricultural sector in selected Indian states; iii) Will higher agricultural GDP necessarily result in higher incomes for farmers; iv) Analysing the current agricultural policy environment to evaluate its efficiency and efficacy, and consolidate all analysis to create a roadmap. These are discussed in 12 chapters, which provide a building block for the concluding chapter that presents a roadmap for revitalising Indian agriculture while ensuring growth in farmers’ incomes.

This is a sweeping survey of American Indian agriculture from its ancient origins to the present. It combines a wealth of historical, anthropological, legal, and economic information in a clear, readable synthesis. "This is without doubt the most thorough and comprehensive treatment of American Indian agriculture in print. It is multidisciplinary and impressive both in scope and in depth. Hurt shows a deft hand in summarizing not only the literature on the evolution of agriculture in North America, but also the dismal failure of American Indian policy to build on earlier Native American achievements. This book is the starting point for any serious consideration of the literature on subjects ranging from the domestication of corn, to pre-contact irrigation, to current Indian water rights."—Richard White, author of It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own. "This extremely worthwhile work is a significant contribution to both Indian history and general American history."—Gilbert Fite, past president of the Agricultural History Society and the Western History Association. "Merits the attention of all who are concerned about the past, present, and future of American Indians. The chapters devoted to the past century should be required reading for students of modern agricultural and American Indian history."—Peter Iverson, author of When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West. "A very thorough and readable account. The scope of this work is truly impressive. The bulk of it revolves around the implementation of United States federal Indian policies aimed at transforming Native Americans into self-sufficient yeoman farmers and farm families during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Hurt's chapters on Indian agriculture and water rights in the twentieth century are very timely and instructive. Should become a standard text for American Indian history courses."—New Mexico Historical Review. "A useful introduction to the subject that is organized in an admirably clear fashion and can be recommended to student and specialist alike."—Journal of American History. "Offers fresh and vital insights into the life and culture of the American Indian."—American Historical Review. "A comprehensive, authoritative account of one of the most significant topics in the history of Indian-white relations."—Western Historical Quarterly.

As biological diversity continues to shrink at an alarming rate, the loss of plant species poses a threat seemingly less visible than the loss of animals but in many ways more critical. In this book, one of America's leading ethnobotanists warns about our loss of natural vegetation and plant diversity while providing insights into traditional Native agricultural practices in the Americas. Gary Paul Nabhan here reveals the rich diversity of plants found in tropical forests and their contribution to modern crops, then tells how this diversity is being lost to agriculture and lumbering. He then relates "local parables" of Native American agriculture—from wild rice in the Great Lakes region to wild gourds in Florida—that convey the urgency of this situation and demonstrate the need for saving the seeds of endangered plants. Nabhan stresses the need for maintaining a wide gene pool, not only for the survival of these species but also for the preservation of genetic strains that can help scientists breed more resilient varieties of other plants. Enduring Seeds is a book that no one concerned with our environment can afford to ignore. It clearly shows us that, as agribusiness increasingly limits the food on our table, a richer harvest can be had by preserving ancient ways. This edition features a new foreword by Miguel Altieri, one of today's leading spokesmen for sustainable agriculture and the preservation of indigenous farming methods.

The book provides a comprehensive discussion on the different aspects of changes and challenges faced by Indian since the Green Revolution. It also looks at how Indian farmers and policymakers are responding to the challenges.

A single seed is more than just the promise of a plant. In rural south India, seeds represent diverging paths toward a sustainable livelihood. Development programs and global agribusiness promote genetically modified seeds and organic certification as a path toward more sustainable cotton production, but these solutions mask a complex web of economic, social, political, and ecological issues that may have consequences as dire as death. In Cultivating Knowledge anthropologist Andrew Flachs shows how rural farmers come to plant genetically modified or certified organic cotton, sometimes during moments of agrarian crisis. Interweaving ethnographic detail, discussions of ecological knowledge, and deep history, Flachs uncovers the unintended consequences of new technologies, which offer great benefits to some—but at others’ expense. Flachs shows that farmers do not make simple cost-benefit analyses when evaluating new technologies and options. Their evaluation of development is a complex and shifting calculation of social meaning, performance, economics, and personal aspiration. Only by understanding this complicated nexus can we begin to understand sustainable agriculture. By comparing the experiences of farmers engaged with these mutually exclusive visions for the future of agriculture, Cultivating Knowledge investigates the human responses to global agrarian change. It illuminates the local impact of global changes: the slow, persistent dangers of pesticides, inequalities in rural life, the aspirations of people who grow fibers sent around the world, the place of ecological knowledge in modern agriculture, and even the complex threat of suicide. It all begins with a seed.

Contributed articles on economic aspects of agriculture in India.

This volume examines the transitions in Indian agriculture since the 1980s, and emphasizes upon the role of neoliberal policies and their impact. The essays presented here deal with a range of pertinent and contemporary issues, including global food security, livelihoods of agricultural labourers, and public and private investment. These weave together glimpses of the impasse faced by petty commodity producers (marginal and small farmers) and their subsequent economic distress and social exclusion. Comprehensive in analysis, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of agricultural economics, political economy, political science and public policy.

Biotechnology can bring major breakthroughs in agriculture. The book examines the experience of introduction of biotechnology in Indian agriculture, specifically, examining the performance of Bt cotton versus non-Bt cotton across India’s major cotton states, namely Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, which together account for nearly 70 percent of the country’s cotton production. Major advances in biotechnology have made it possible to directly identify genes, determine their functions, and transfer them from one organism to another. The advances have spawned many technologies and Bt cotton is one important outcome. Bt cotton has become one of the most widely cultivated transgenic crops and is currently grown in 21 countries - 11 developing and 10 industrialized countries. The Government of India was relatively late in permitting biotechnology, only approving the cultivation of three transgenic Bt cotton hybrids from April 2002. Many concerns were raised about their performance there was strong opposition from some quarters. In India, Gujarat and Maharastra were the first states to adopt them, followed by Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. Based on a sample of 694 farming households, the book examines and analyzes the performance on the yields, pesticide costs, seed costs, overall production costs and profits. It also reports on the environmental impacts, satisfaction with the technology and ways of improving its performance.

This open access book provides a clear holistic conceptual framework of CISS-F (competitiveness, inclusiveness, sustainability, scalability and access to finance) to analyse the efficiency of value chains of high value agricultural commodities in India. It is based on the understanding that agriculture is an integrated system that connects farming with logistics, processing and marketing. Farmer’s welfare being central to any agricultural policy makes it very pertinent to study how a value chain works and can be strengthened further to realize this policy goal. This book adds value to the existing research by studying the value chains end-to-end across a wide spectrum of agricultural commodities with the holistic lens of CISS-F. It is not enough that a value chain is competitive but not inclusive or it is competitive and inclusive but not sustainable. The issue of scalability is very critical to achieve macro gains in terms of greater farmer outreach and sectoral growth. The research undertaken here brings out some very useful insights for policymaking in terms of what needs to be done better to steer the agricultural value chains towards being more competitive, inclusive, sustainable and scalable. The value chain specific research findings help draw very nuanced policy recommendations as well as present a big picture of the future direction of policy making in agriculture.

From a country plagued with chronic food shortage, the Green Revolution turned India into a food-grain self-sufficient nation within the decade of 1968-1978. By contrast, the decade of 1995-2005 witnessed a spate in suicides among farmers in many parts of the country. These tragic incidents were symptomatic of the severe stress and strain that the agriculture sector had meanwhile accumulated. The book recounts how the high achievements of the Green Revolution had overgrown to a state of this ‘agrarian crisis’. In the process, it also brings to fore the underlying resilience and innovativeness in the sector which enabled it not just to survive through the crisis but to evolve and revive out of it. The need of the hour is to create an environment that will enable the sector to acquire the robustness to contend with the challenges of lifting levels of farm income and coping with Climate Change. To this end, a multi-pronged intervention strategy has been suggested. Reviving public investment in irrigation, tuning agrarian institutions to the changed context, strengthening of market institution for better farm-market linkage and financial access of farmers, and preparing the ground for ushering in technological innovations should form the major components of this policy paradigm.