Trends in Crop Diversification and its Impact on Crop Income in Rural India: An Empirical Investigation from Selected Villages in the Semi-Arid Tropics

This paper examines the trends of crop diversification in selected villages of Semi-Arid Tropics (SAT) region. The paper draws extensively on data for the period 2001 to 2014 from the longitudinal Village-level Studies (VLS) implemented by International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). The analysis of the long-term data reveals that crop diversity is governed by economic and social factors while the natural factors stand for physiographic and climatic condition (like rainfall). The bivariate relation between Crop Diversity Index (CDI) and crop income implies that to enhance the farmers’ incomes, crop diversification is one of the major factors. In addition, multivariate tobit regression coefficients indicate household-head education, family size, operational land holding and numbers of draught animals in the household have significant and positive effect on the household crop diversification. On the other hand, available irrigated area and draught have significant negative impact on the crop diversification. The study concludes that there exists a positive and significant association between the crop diversity and crop income. Therefore, to ensure sustainability in agriculture, research and innovations must focus on diversification of crops which will provide higher profit to smallholder farmers.