Livelihood Status of Neem Seed Pickers and Constraints in Seed Collection and Procurement in Tamil Nadu

Aims: Neem Seeds have considerable economic significance due to a variety of commercial usages. Realising the significance of neem, the present study aimed to understand the rural households’ participation in neem seed collection and issues in collection and sales. Study Design: Simple random sampling method was followed. Place and Duration of the Study: The present study was conducted in Tamil Nadu state covering seven districts namely Coimbatore, Dindigul, Dharmapuri, Madurai, Sivagangai, Thoothukudi and Vellore. A total of 450 households who involved in neem seed collection was selected and studied. The data collected was pertaining to the year 2019-20. Methodology: Simple mean, percentage analysis, standard deviation and Garrett Ranking techniques were employed. Results: Ninety seven percent of the neem seed collectors are above 30 years. Majority of the neem seed collectors are illiterate mostly belong to the category of more than 50 years and 30 to 50 years. Agriculture based households members generally involved in neem seed collection. Majority of the neem seed collectors (61 per cent) collect neem seeds in local village itself. Around 26 per cent of the respondents visit nearby villages to collect neem seeds. To collect neem seeds, the rural households travel 4.65 km daily, with a minimum of 2.0 km and maximum of 7.0 km in a day. The constraints in seed collection are time consuming, travel long to collect seeds, less remunerative, less productive etc. The major constraints in selling include poor price offered by the traders, lack of awareness on price in other markets, lack of awareness about quality. Conclusion: Programmes like price support, market intervention in the form of price dissemination, market and transport infrastructure will help the rural people to fetch better price for their collected neem seeds.

Foreign experience of innovative development of the agro-industrial complex.

The relevance of the topic of the article - the issues of innovative development of agroindustrial complex of Kazakhstan, which provides large-scale production, require detailed study. The goal - is to consider the positive aspects of the best practices of foreign countries regarding this problem and develop practical recommendations. Methods - generalization, quantitative and qualitative analysis, abstract logical. Results - in order to apply high technologies in agricultural sector, economically developed countries use subsidy systems, price support (USA), government assistance in obtaining income per hectare and payments for livestock (EU countries), income support through payments (Canada) and concessional lending (Brazil). In addition to financial assistance, agricultural producers in the USA, Canada and other countries are provided with information, legal, innovation, marketing, insurance and other types of support. Conclusions - innovative processes, expansion of the competitive environment in the AIC presuppose the effective use of scientific and technical potential, integration of science, education and production, technological modernization of the economy based on progressive methods. Innovation is reflected in the implementation of the strategic objectives of ensuring food security and effective regulation of the domestic food market in order to stimulate labor productivity in agriculture, increase export potential of agricultural sector. It is necessary to combine innovative activity in domestic agro-industrial production with international practice, which will increase production capacity of agrarian sector of the republic. The development trends of the world market convincingly show that there can be no other way in Kazakhstan than the formation of a new type of economy, widespread innovation.

Are agricultural support policies harmful to the environment? Evidence from Japanese farm-level policy simulation

This study presents the environmental impacts of agricultural policy instruments as evidence from an ex-ante farm-level policy simulation model in Japan. Simulations did indicate that all types of agri-environmental payments achieved the environmental benefit for the land studied. Conversely, market price support does not inevitably increase nitrogen runoff or greenhouse gas emissions at any time since paddy fields themselves have the function of purifying water pollution and work as a biodiversity nursery. The direction and magnitude of the policy impacts are an empirical matter that should be considered carefully at a local level.

Agriculture Subsidies: Unravelling the Linkages between the Amber Box and the Blue Box Support

Domestic support disciplines under the Agreement on Agriculture are controversial, to say the least. The aggregate measurement of support (AMS) restricts Members’ policy space to provide product-specific support. The structural flaws in the determination of AMS further compel Members to explore alternatives. In contrast to the Amber Box, the Blue Box offers certain flexibilities for Members to exempt product-specific support from AMS calculation. The Blue Box reflects several elements which are seemingly typical to the Amber Box, except that it has certain production-limiting features. This article explores the legal bounds of the Blue Box measures, and its similarities and dissimilarities with the Amber Box. Towards this end, the article builds on a fresh legal understanding of the Blue Box based on its negotiating history and interpretative bounds, and also offers a fuller appreciation of market price support (MPS) and non-exempt direct payments under the Amber Box. While the calculation methodology for non-exempt direct payments bears a close resemblance to the calculation of MPS, the article argues that direct payment and MPS measures are fundamentally distinct types of product-specific support which makes the interchangeability of Blue and Amber Boxes seemingly difficult.

Effectiveness of Auctions in Securing Price Support for Farmers: The Case of a Grain Market in India

This paper reviews rice procurement operations of Government of India from the standpoints of cost of procurement as well as effectiveness in supporting farmers’ incomes. The two channels in use for procuring rice till 2015, were custom milling of rice and levy. In the first, the government bought paddy directly from farmers at the minimum support price (MSP) and got it milled from private millers; while in the second, it purchased rice from private millers at a pre-announced levy price thus providing indirect price support to farmers. Secondary data reveal that levy, despite implying lower cost of procurement was discriminated against till about a decade back and eventually abolished in 2015 in favor of custom milling, better trusted to provide minimum price support. We analyze data from auctions of paddy from a year when levy was still important to investigate its impact on farmers’ revenues. We use semi-nonparametric estimates of millers’ values to simulate farmers’ expected revenues and find these to be rather close to the MSP; a closer analysis shows that bidder competition is critical to this result. Finally, we use our estimates to quantify the impact of change in levy price on farmers’ revenues and use this to discuss ways to revive the levy channel.

Growth Performance of Groundnut in Ananthapuramu District of Andhra Pradesh – A Temporal Analysis

Ananthapuramu district is considered as one of the major groundnut growing districts in the Andhra Pradesh state, with an average area, production and yield of 7.04 lakh hectares, 3.65 lakh tonnes and 512 kg ha-1 respectively, during the present millennium (from 2000-01 to 2018-19). Though the district is drought prone and majority of the cultivated area is under rainfed ecosystem, groundnut still continues to be one of the largest cropped area in the district. This interesting feature of the district has driven to take up the study on the performance of groundnut in the district through Compound Annual Growth Rates (CAGR) and decomposition analysis. CAGR of area, production and yield of the groundnut and decomposition analysis of groundnut production in the district were analyzed from 1970-71 to 2018-19. For lucidity, the study period was divided in three sub-periods viz., Period I (1970-71 to 1985-86), Period II (1986-87 to 1999-2000) and Period III (1999-2000 to 2018-19). It was evident from the results that, the growth performance of groundnut in Ananthapuramu district declined over the years, particularly in Period III, which implies that, despite lot of efforts from researchers and government to encourage groundnut production at macro level, the contribution of groundnut at district level showed a declining trend. This scenario could be attributed to low farm level yields with higher farm level inefficiencies, gaps in production technology, geographical location of the district under rain shadow region, declining scenario in the length of growing period, shift towards competing crops, poor post-harvest support, changing climate, lower yields, low extension contact at field level, low market prices and high abiotic and abiotic stresses. It was opined that, groundnut cultivation in the district should be encouraged with the partnership of private institutional players, where the farmers would get high quality seed, agro-advisory, post-harvest support, value addition support, remunerative and assured price support etc., encouragement of value addition, reduction of the length of market channels to reduce the supply gap between farmer and consumer would help in realignment of the growth performance of groundnut in the district.

The Capitalization Effect and Its Consequence of Agricultural Support Policies—Based on the Evidence of 800 Villages in China

The theoretical and empirical results of the capitalization effect of agricultural support policies on land rental price remain inconclusive. Based on the survey of Chinese Household Income Projects in 2007 and 2008, this paper adopts the panel data of 800 villages in 11 provinces in China to empirically analyze the impact of agricultural support policies on village-level land rental price. It shows that both output price support and agricultural subsidies have a significant positive effect on land rental price in the village. For each 1 CNY/kg increase in output price support, the land rental price in the village will rise by about 322.44 CNY/mu, while with an additional 1 CNY/mu increase in agricultural subsidies, it will increase by CNY 0.45. The stronger the social relationships in the village, the less area of land transfer for a fee and the lower the land rental price. For villages with weak social relationships or renting land to outsiders, output price support and agricultural subsidies can significantly increase the land rental price. Output price support and agricultural subsidies not only have a significant positive effect on the area of land transfer in the village but also an indirect negative effect on it by raising the price of regional land rent.