Madhya Pradesh, one of the largest states in the country, has been lagging in private investment in agriculture since the 2000s. To investigate the reasons for this decline, breakeven analysis coupled with trend analysis was carried out using plot-level secondary data from DES, India, for the period 2000-01 to 2016-17 for sorghum, cotton, maize, chickpea/gram, black gram, red gram, lentil, rapeseed and mustard, soybean, paddy and wheat crops. The results revealed that the cotton, soybean and black gram were unsuitable for farmers with inadequate means while lentil was the most stable crop. Rice-wheat and Cotton-gram cropping pattern was found to be risky. Red gram, gram, sorghum, paddy, mustard, soybean and black gram had a horizontal trend of break-even output. Wheat was the only crop with a negative trend of breakeven output. Important policy suggestions include the adoption of custom hiring of machinery and rigorous yield improvement programmes for paddy, sorghum and maize.
