Effect of Agro-economic Variables on Disbursement of Agricultural Credit in Bihar

Agricultural production process is biological in nature and has comparatively long transition period, resulting in a wide time gap between investment and income. For the long production and marketing period, the available fund with the farmers is not found sufficient. Credit requirement of the farmers has increased manifold in Bihar particularly because of using more and more of purchased inputs i.e. high yielding variety seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, micronutrients, pesticides etc. The study is based on time series data of Bihar for a period of 25 years that is from 1980–81 to 2005–06. It is found that association between agricultural credit flow and different variables as the percentage area under HYV, percentage area under irrigation, percentage area under non cereal crops, fertilizer consumption per hectare and no of PACS per 1000 villages, land holding and agricultural labour use was positive.