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.
