Farmer's response to economic incentives in India

Revealing the futility of traditional approaches to tackling the problem of agricultural productivity this study challanges the economists to consider a more pragmatic approach. Wheat is a most important food grain in our country and many studies have been made to analyse wheat supply res ponse in our country. However, no generalisation as to inter-regional behaviour of wheat supply response was possible in view of varied, and sometimes conflicting estimates of supply elasticity arrived at by different researchers. This study seeks to analyse inter-regional behaviour in wheat supply response employing a common estimating procedure and a common approach to the specification of variables.

Importance of the present work. also lies in the fact that the different regions in our country show a great variety of climatic conditions, topo graphy, soil characterstics, surface and ground water availability, giving rise to a variety of agricultural and non-agricultural activities. The pre sent study was designed to probe into the causes of the Instability and the fluctuations in the acreage under different crops which has always been a matter of great concern and we arrived at a meaningful, and quanti fiable explanations. For presenting an inter-regional picture of the degree of responsiveness to price changes, the estimates of short-run and long run elasticities have been obtained for the various regions. In the study we have tried to show that what constraints the farm operators face while making production decisions.