The Government of India had launched the National Biofuel Mission in the year 2003 as an initiative to limit the country’s dependence on crude oil imports. An integral part of this mission is the Biodiesel Blending program and Jatropha, a tree-borne biodiesel yielding crop, is the...

The food demand in India has been examined in the context of a structural shift in the dietary pattern of its population. The results have reinforced the hypothesis of a significant diversification in the dietary pattern of households in recent years and has found stark differences in the...

During the year 2007-08, the area under green peas in Punjab was 18.45 thousand hectares with a production of 1.11 lakh tonnes. The total consumption at the farm level being just 2.54 per cent, the marketed surplus was 97.46 per cent. The maximum quantity of green peas was sold by the growers in...

This study has estimated the total factor productivity (TFP) and its share in output growth, and returns to public investments on research in agriculture in India. The contribution of agricultural research in reducing real cost of production and attainment of food self-sufficiency has also been...

The study conduced on South Asian countries is focused on three issues, viz. (a) research priorities in agriculture, (b) level of research investment, and (c) focus of research investments to attain food-secured South Asia. The results of this empirical exercise have suggested that (a) cereals,...

The technical efficiency in crop production has been reported in different regions as well as in the state of Punjab to show how different regions have adopted the latest technology. Technical efficiency of individual farms has been estimated through stochastic frontier production function...

Punjab is the second largest producer of wheat after Uttar Pradesh in the country but the state’s share in contribution to the central pool is maximum. The study has brought out that the marketed surplus of wheat was about 84 per cent with the selected farmers and about 96 per cent of the...

The cost and return analysis of different sizes of broiler farms in the Punjab state has been carried out based on the primary data collected from 140 broiler farmers for the period March 2008 to February 2009 in three districts, viz. Ludhiana, Hoshiarpur and Muktsar. The study has shown that...

Policy planners face the challenge of formulating suitable agricultural policy by which the required growth in domestic production can be achieved. To attain effective food security policy, one needs reliable empirical knowledge about the degree of responsiveness of factor demand and output...