A Risk Management Technique Adopted by Farmers of North India to Mixes a Wide Variety of Crops within a Portfolio

Abstract

India has made tremendous progress in agriculture over the past decades. Technological change with the introduction of short duration high yielding varieties of wheat and rice in the sixties increased productivity of these crops manifold. The effective price policy coupled with relatively better technology has resulted in the emergence of paddy in kharif and wheat in rabi as the most secured and profitable crops in several states. Consequently, production of wheat and rice in India has increased from 23.8 and 42.2 million tonnes in 1970-71 to 95.8 and 106.3 million tonnes in 2013- 14. This translates into a growth rate of 2.82 and 1.86 per cent per annum for wheat and rice during this period. The output of wheat and rice in the country has reached a saturation point. But, farmers in agriculturally advanced states like Punjab and Haryana two landlocked states in northern India.