Economics of Some Dryland Agricultural Technologies. Research Bulletin.

Abstract

Enhancing the productivity of drylands is essential in order to achieve sustainable and more widely spread growth in Indian agriculture. The drylands are characterized by poor soil and water resource availability and shelter a majority of rural poor in India. Unlike with irrigated agriculture, achieving dramatic yield gains is difficult in dryland agriculture (Katyal et al., 1996). Therefore, it is required to plan for gradual increases in crop yields by making a more efficient use of available resources. Development and transfer of technologies for enhancing crop yields under dryland conditions is the key mandate of the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture. Economics of a technology is one of the important determinants of technology adoption and as such economic viability is a necessary condition for a technology to be adopted. Technologies, which are strongly viable and profitable, will have the self-replicating ability. It is, therefore, important to assess the technologies for their economic viability before they are transferred to the farmers. The broad range of rainfed technologies includes development of an improved set of practices, appropriate intercropping system, integrated pest management, soil and water conservation measures. This bulletin intends to put together the information on the economics of some important dryland agricultural technologies.