It is alleged that the agricultural output in poor countries
responds very little to movements in prices and costs because of
subsistence-oriented produc¬tion and self-produced inputs. The work of
Gupta and Majid is concerned with the empirical verification of the
responsiveness of farmers to prices and marketing policies in a backward
region. The authors' analysis of the respon¬siveness of farmers to
economic incentives is based on two sets of data (concern¬ing sugarcane,
cash crop, and paddy, subsistence crop) collected from the district of
Deoria in Eastern U.P. (Utter Pradesh) a chronically foodgrain deficit
region in northern India. In one set, they have aggregate time-series
data at district level and, in the other, they have obtained data from a
survey of five villages selected from 170 villages around Padrauna town
in Deoria.
The People, Place, and Space Reader by Jen Gieseking, William Mangold, Cindi Katz, Setha Low, and Susan Saegert, eds. New York: Routledge, 2014.