Growth, Poverty and Developmental Aspects of Agriculture

From the history of economic development for all types of economies of the world, agriculture has been a major source of income growth, food security and development. It applies traditional as well as modern tools and technologies to maintain rising growth trends, although in some cases it makes the environment polluted. The developing countries of today, those who were suffering from poverty and food insecurity, have now been able to grow several crops and feed their growing population. Productivity has been rising in the sector with the support of institutional interventions, such as credit and financing facilities, crop insurance facilities, irrigation facilities, fertilizer provisions, among others, leading to more production with the same level of two traditional inputs such as labour and capital. The world has been facing, on the other hand, the fluctuations and instabilities in the trends of different types of agricultural productions and yield rates. The present book, with the background, aims to cover up studies on the poverty increase and food security aspects of agriculture in several countries and populations. The summary of the studies shows that there has been growth in agricultural production and productivities and in maintaining more food security in the covered countries with institutional support but with rising fluctuations. The governments of these countries are recommended to intervene and make appropriate institutional support in an equitable manner across their regions so that rising growth could be maintained in a steady path in the agricultural sector.

Over the past decade, India has emerged as one of the major exporters of agricultural products in the international market. Although agriculture in India accounts for about 50% of the economy's employment, its contribution as share to India's gross domestic product is significantly low. India primarily has emphasized on the production of food grains since the government policies promote not only exports but also food security and sustenance of rural and vulnerable sections of the economy. In recent times, India has witnessed a sharp increase in the productivity of food grains, but the underlying factors are of grave concern since issues such as suboptimal production, underutilization of resources and inability to adopt advanced technologies remain unacknowledged. The present study delves into various aspects of the production of food grains across 30 Indian states and emphasizes upon measuring the efficiency of food grain production across the 30 states on the basis of the non-parametric technique of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The evaluation also considers economies of scale. The results highlight the fact that the Indian states are about 21% inefficient in terms of food grain production with the average efficiency score being 0.79. The methodology adopted for this study incorporates crucial factors such as usage of land area, usage of fertilizers and allocation of bank credit to carry the analysis forward. The present study has also aimed at providing certain policy recommendations for the policymakers in this regard so that the states can sustainably improve their efficiency in terms of the production of food grains.

This study examines the impact of deposit money banks' loan on agricultural sustainability in Nigeria for the period 1985–2017. The study adopted the ARDL bonding test to determine the short- and long-run effect of deposit money banks' loan on agricultural sustainability in Nigeria. It found that bank loans have a negative impact on agricultural sustainability in both the short and long run. Similarly, deposit money banks' interest rate also has an inverse relationship on agricultural growth in Nigeria in both the long and short run. The study concludes that bank finance is very impactful in stimulating agricultural growth within the context of the Nigerian economy. Therefore, the study recommends that the Nigerian government should increase agricultural financing and lower interest rates in order to achieve food sufficiency and promote agricultural sustainability.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has a critical role in boosting agricultural productivity and the growth of emerging economies. The relationship between FDI inflows and environmental factors has not received much attention in identifying its impact on agricultural output. Using annual time series data from 1990 to 2023, this study examines the causal association and short- and long-run effects of FDI inflows, forest coverage and CO2 emissions on the agricultural productivity of the India, China and US (ICU) economies. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) results confirmed that FDI inflows have a significant and positive impact on Indian and Chinese agriculture productivity, whereas CO2 emissions adversely affect US agriculture productivity in the long run. In the short run, CO2 emissions led to agricultural productivity in both China and the US economies. The bound test and error correction model (ECM) result also confirmed the long-run connection and convergence of the equilibrium path among the studied variables except India. The findings of the Granger causality test showed a unidirectional causal link between agriculture productivity and FDI inflows and forest coverage in India and a bidirectional causal link between CO2 emission and agricultural yield and forest coverage and CO2 emission in the Chinese agriculture sector. The study also revealed a unidirectional causal association between forest coverage and agricultural output and between FDI, CO2 emissions and forest coverage in the US agriculture sector. Policymakers were advised to encourage FDI in the agriculture sector and expand the use of environment-friendly technology to decrease carbon emissions and promote forest coverage for sustainable growth and higher agricultural production.

Like many other countries, Mexico has invested in finding measures to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) to its territories. In 1994, Mexico signed the United States–Canada–Mexico (USCM), a pact that positions Mexico as the United States' greatest direct exporter, with the prospect of leaving the treaty following the renegotiating of the USCM. This study seeks to analyse the benefits and drawbacks of renegotiation inside the USCM. It is said that the renegotiation of the Treat of Mexico, United States and Canada (Tratado de México, Estados Unidos y Canadá, TMEC) does not have to cause a wave of anxiety surrounding agricultural commodities and goods from the State of Sinaloa's exports because the renegotiation was accepted and a fair arrangement was established for the three countries. Looking directly at Sinaloa's agricultural exports, the study suggests that such a renegotiation is not beneficial for Sinaloan agricultural exportation putting forth the evidences to support the hypothesis applied.

Crop insurance protects the farmers and helps in reducing any element of chance associated with agriculture. It is a contract between the agriculturist and the insurer where the insurer promises to pay the farmer an indemnity in case of loss suffered by him due to unforeseen events, against a premium. Crop insurance creates a sense of confidence among the farmers which in turn encourages them to follow the agricultural best practices, thus taking a step towards sustainable agriculture. The concept of sustainable agriculture can be explained as producing food and livestock by causing minimum damage to the environment. Crop insurance thus creates a win-win situation for sustainable agriculture. The importance of crop insurance is undeniable and that is the reason its global footprint is quite prominent. The size of crop insurance market was USD 39.81 billion in 2022, and it was expected to grow to USD 61.51 billion by 2030. Among all the regions, Asia–Pacific is expected to grow at a very fast pace. The objectives of the present chapter are to explain the role of crop insurance towards sustainable agriculture and to make a study of the crop insurance schemes prevalent in selected European and Asian countries. The data have been collected from various secondary sources like books, journals, websites, etc. The authors have come to the conclusion that crop insurance is being offered in the selected European and Asian countries in various forms. Public–private partnership is very common among these selected countries.

Uncertainty in commodity pricing is a major cause of concern for farmers of developing countries like India. To observe the decision-making process of farmers of Burdwan district of West Bengal, India, the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model is employed to measure the extent of volatility in spot prices of potato and also to observe the existence of seasonal effects; Agmarknet database provided by Government of India over the period of 2003–2019 has been used. The market price of potato decreased during its season of production and peaked during the off-season period. The result implies that the volatility of potato forecasting is tending towards the standard error correction in the long run and from 2003 to 2019; the trend of potato price was influenced by multiple events. The result indicates that the farmers must focus on short-run structural events in the potato market.

The agricultural sector in any country plays an important contributor to national output along with its high absorbability of the working population. In the agricultural sector, paddy production holds a major share in the total output in countries like India. The growth and stability of the paddy production at the national level depends on the same factors at the sub-national levels such as the provincial and district levels. The present study focuses first on the stability analysis of the quantity of food production and irrigation facilities in the top 10 rice-producing states in India and then on the stability of yield rates in three varieties of paddy production, Aus, Aman, and Boro, and irrigation facilities across the blocks in the Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal, as a special reference. The analyses involves the evaluation of the growth and stability using Coppock’s method and trend analysis. It is found that Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh have a positive significant correlation between irrigation facilities and paddy production. From this study, it is also found that the correlation between changes in the yield rate of Aus, Aman, and Boro production and changes in irrigation is positive and significantly related to each other for Garbeta 1, Garbeta 3, Keshiary, Kharagpur 2, Chandrakona 1, and Chandrakona 2 blocks in Paschim Medinipur district under West Bengal. Therefore, the results recommend that the government should focus on irrigation facilities in those areas where the benefits of irrigation facilities are fully realized.

Despite recent economic progress, Bangladesh still faces significant challenges from natural disasters that impact food security and employment. In 2017, a severe flash flood caused by excessive rain and onrush from India devastated the haor-based Sunamganj district. The study explores the impacts of the flash flood on food security, employment and the overall well-being of the affected population, as well as evaluates government and NGO initiatives taken to alleviate the crisis using a mixed-methods approach, incorporating qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques such as in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), key informant interviews and surveys from the flash flood-affected people residing in the five affected villages. The study observes that the flash flood caused severe damage to the agricultural sector, with almost every farmer in the affected area losing their single-season high-yielding Boro paddy, resulting in year-long food insecurity and unemployment. The government responded to the situation by providing year-long food and monetary aid through various social safety net programmes, although some accusations of nepotism and embezzlement were reported. The study found that the majority of the people were reliant on government aid for survival throughout the year. Moreover, some NGOs also played a crucial role by providing food and other support. The research suggests that transparency and accountability must be prioritized to ensure fairness, and positive lessons learned from the government's efforts during this flash flood might be helpful in reducing vulnerability and distributing relief more effectively.

The problem of food security depends highly on food availability along with access, utilization and stability. In this study, we would like to focus on the food availability criterion. With the rise in food prices, production of food is expected to increase in the domestic as well as in the international market. Therefore, the G-20 countries collectively, which produce up to 80% of the world's cereals and also have the largest percentage share of world agricultural exports, ought to benefit from the rise in agricultural prices. However, a significant number of countries in this group are net importers in terms of agricultural inputs. Also, the rise in the prices of non-renewable resources raises the demand and cost of biofuels. Commodity trading and the weakening of the exchange rate also affect farm prices. A rise in farm prices from these accounts may not be supportive of to rise in food production and food security. Hence, it will be interesting to analyze the effect of rising food prices on the problem of food security of the G-20 countries from the perspective of food production. In this study, we have taken rice as a representative food item and found that rice production is significantly responsive to the domestic relative price of rice. However, there is no price incentive operative for rice productivity. Rather, we find evidence of a negative relationship between rice productivity and domestic rice prices in relation to the international prices.

Food security emerges when all people always have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. The availability of food, access to food, and absorption of food are three key aspects of food security. Considering the above, the initial goal in this chapter is to measure annual growth rate and compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of production of food grains, nutri coarse cereals, total pulses, and nine oilseeds for the period 2011–2021 in India. To estimate per capita availability of Food Grains, Nutri Coarse Cereals, Total Pulses and Nine Oilseeds (in kg) represents the food security in India. The highest production is recorded in between 2011 and 2021 for food grains (315.72), followed by the production of nine oil seeds (36.7), total pulses (27.69), and nutri coarse cereals (26.42). In 2016, the annual growth rate for food grains and nine oilseeds was 9.37 and 23.88%, respectively. It is very evident that the availability per capita has grown from 2011 to 2021. The per capita availability of food grains increased from 206.17 kg in 2011 to 224.30 kg in 2021. The per capita availability of total pulses increased from 13.59 kg in 2011 to 19.67 kg in 2021. The per capita availability of nine oil seeds increased from 23.70 kg in 2011 to 26.78 kg in 2021 which indicates India has managed food security successfully in the last decade.

By any count or criterion, Pakistan is a national security state. It always was. The country has fought four wars with India, and it continues to suffer the devastating consequences of confrontation with its formidable neighbor – India; it has been put under siege for more than 40 years by the terrorist and religious extremist groups; it has suffered long spells of military rule; its political structure remains fragile; its civil society organizations are vulnerable, weak, and toothless; and its media, universities, research institutes, and judiciary are under huge stress. Given the state of affairs, the realization is rather slow to grow that human development strengthens national power and national security much more than weapons. It is in this context that a study on food insecurity in Pakistan has been undertaken. It aims to explain as to how a predominantly agricultural country has been reduced into a food resource poor country, and how has the neglect of social, economic, and cultural sectors made Pakistan more insecure. This study covers a number of related issues as well, but it mainly looks for answer to two questions: first, should food insecurity be studied in isolation as a separate issue or as a part of the larger issue of governance, security, and people; and second, isn't there a need to drastically restructure the economic, political, and security landscape and framework to significantly diminish poverty, illiteracy, and food insecurity in the country?

Food security is the major issue of the world as well as in developing countries like India in recent times. The study examines the status of food security for 15 selected states in India during 1995–1996 to 2018–2019 where the statuses of food security for the states are estimated by applying the multidimensional food security index. The secondary data on different food security indicators are collected from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agricultural Organization, National Family Health Survey (NFHS) report, RBI bulletin, Economic and Political Weekly Research Foundation (EPWRF), and different issues of Statistical Abstract of India. The value of the food security index has significantly increased over the study period. The food security conditions for all the states have improved at higher rates in the second subperiod compared to the first subperiod in the country. It has also used panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method for the estimation of log-term and short-term relationship between food security and socioeconomic indicators of various states in the country. The food security of most of the states could be improved with the improvement in the conditions on the per capita power consumption, workforce participation rate, and cropping intensity in the country. Furthermore, the regional imbalance has decreased establishing that food security of the poorer states improved at a higher rate compared to richer states.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been suffering from a food crisis. Due to the acute fiscal crisis since 2021, both countries are in search of a way out of this economic hardship. Issues such as lack of industrialization, ethnic conflicts, political violence, terrorism, corruption, misgovernance, arms trafficking, drug trafficking and human trafficking, poverty, illiteracy, and overdependency on foreign aid are common in both countries. Pakistan has an additional feature of military involvement in politics and the decision-making process. Due to wrong governmental policy, corruption, lack of agriculture, or food security policy, food security is a fundamental issue for both the countries. Foreign currency reserves in Pakistan are currently depleted, and international funding agencies are not interested in sanctioning additional loans. The economic profile of the country has declined due to terror financing. Millions of people in Pakistan are experiencing food crisis, with starvation becoming more common. The government has no adequate money to import food grains from overseas. Since August 2021, the foreign-aid-dependent Afghan economy has been facing severe crisis . After the Taliban took over the administration of Afghanistan for the second time, foreign donors stopped all types of assistance, thereby intensifying the food crisis. Due to the shortage of water, modern irrigation systems, droughts, and modern agriculture equipment, Afghanistan is unable to produce adequate food. This chapter intends to investigate the causes and consequences of food security in Pakistan and Afghanistan through the content analysis method.

In India, more than 21.9% of the total population is below the poverty line, which compelled the government to initiate several policies for alleviating poverty and food insecurity. It can be argued that often non-poor households may become food insecure due to their irrational expenditure behaviour. The widespread consumerism and commercialism in rural India as a result of globalization often drive rural households to spend more on non-food items than food items. As a result, it is frequently observed that non-poor farmers excluded from the social security programs are highly malnourished as a result of food insecurity, which pushes them back into the poverty trap. This study reviews critically the methodologies applied to measure household poverty and food insecurity and examine the relationship between the two using primary data collected from two villages of the Balasore district of Odisha whose major livelihood relies on agriculture using the m-logit model for data analysis. Results show even households living above the poverty line suffer from the problem of food insecurity. About 20.5% of the non-poor are food insecure in the study villages. The study also finds a location-specific spatial autocorrelation of Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and headcount ratio among the districts of the state using Moran's I. Hence, there is a need for properly targeted policy interventions and to revise the methodologies applied to measure household poverty and identify beneficiaries so that non-poor households are not deprived of food security programmes.