Article
Scale Neutrality in Indian Agriculture
Economic and Political Weekly
(2021)
Abstract
Marginal and small farm sizes constitute more than 85% of the operational holdings in India. Several concerns regarding the sustainability, efficiency, access to formal sources of credit and the scale neutrality of such credit plague the smallholders. This study finds that the smallholders are efficient but the returns to them are woefully low, which threatens their sustainability. Further, the smallholders have to rely more on non-institutional sources for their credit requirement and often with a greater interest burden. In addition, the credit provided by formal sources is not scale-neutral. This posits a difficulty for policy praxis, which must urgently address these issues plaguing the smallholders.
Keywords
- Agriculture,
- credit,
- efficient,
- farm size,
- India,
- scale neutrality,
- smallholder,
- sustainable.
Disciplines
Publication Date
June 26, 2021
Citation Information
Srijit Mishra. "Scale Neutrality in Indian Agriculture" Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 56 Iss. 26 and 27 Supplement (2021) p. 7 - 13 ISSN: 0012-9976 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/srijit_mishra/135/