IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sch/wpaper/388.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Augmenting small farmers’ income through rural non-farm sector: Role of information and institutions

Author

Listed:
  • Meenakshi Rajeev
  • Manojit Bhattacharjee

    (Institute for Social and Economic Change)

Abstract

Low level of income of farmers is a critical concern in India in the backdrop of which the current Union Government promised to double farmers’ income by 2022. As the land size of the small and marginal farmers, who constitute 80 percent of farmer population in India is limited, reducing farmers’ distress and doubling of farmers’ income through farm sector alone is almost impossible. In this regard, the non-farm sector can not only absorb the excess labour from agriculture but also generate additional income for the farm households. Further, the sector can help in mitigating risks for the farmers and check migration to urban areas. The non-farm sector, however, has not received its due importance in the country and in this back drop, the current paper discusses the nature and extent of non-farm activities in India using India Human Development Survey unit record data. An exercise carried out to understand the determinants of income from non-farm activities using a Tobit regression model, shows that the households who could avail larger size loans (for any purpose including agriculture) or insurance from financial institutions and have access to information and networks are the ones who could get higher non-farm income. As the credit for non-farm activities per say is rather limited, it can be inferred that higher level of credit for even farm activities can help non-farm sector as well possibly through production linkages.

Suggested Citation

  • Meenakshi Rajeev & Manojit Bhattacharjee, 2017. "Augmenting small farmers’ income through rural non-farm sector: Role of information and institutions," Working Papers 388, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    • Handle: RePEc:sch:wpaper:388
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. von Braun, Joachim & Pandya-Lorch, Rajul, 1991. "Income sources of malnourished people in rural areas: Microlevel information and policy implications," IFPRI working papers 5, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    2. Mellor, John W. & Lele, Uma J., 1973. "Growth Linkages of the New Foodgrain Technologies," Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, vol. 28(1), pages 1-22.
    3. Luis H. B. Braido, 2003. "Insurance and Incentives in Sharecropping," CESifo Working Paper Series 1098, CESifo.
    4. Meenakshi Rajeev & Manojit Bhattacharjee & B P Vani, 2015. "Crop Insurance and Risk Mitigation: Experiences from India," ICDD Working Papers 15, University of Kassel, Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften (Social Sciences), Internatioanl Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD).
    5. Awotide, B.A. & Abdoulaye, Tahirou & Alene, Arega & Manyong, Victor M., 2015. "Impact of Access to Credit on Agricultural Productivity: Evidence from Smallholder Cassava Farmers in Nigeria," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 210969, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Barrett, C. B. & Reardon, T. & Webb, P., 2001. "Nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural Africa: concepts, dynamics, and policy implications," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 315-331, August.
    7. Schmitt, Gunther, 1991. "Why Is the Agriculture of Advanced Western Economies Still Organized by Family Farms? Will This Continue to Be So in the Future?," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 18(3-4), pages 443-458.
    8. Haggblade, Steven & Hazell, Peter B. R. & Reardon, Thomas Anthony (ed.), 2007. "Transforming the rural nonfarm economy: Opportunities and threats in the developing world," IFPRI books, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), number 978-0-8018-8664-5.
    9. Lanjouw, Jean O. & Lanjouw, Peter, 2001. "The rural non-farm sector: issues and evidence from developing countries," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 1-23, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Benjamin Davis & Paul Winters & Thomas Reardon & Kostas Stamoulis, 2009. "Rural nonfarm employment and farming: household‐level linkages," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 40(2), pages 119-123, March.
    2. Almeida, Alexandre N. & Bravo-Ureta, Boris E., 2019. "Agricultural productivity, shadow wages and off-farm labor decisions in Nicaragua," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 99-110.
    3. Marwan Benali & Bernhard Brümmer & Victor Afari‐Sefa, 2018. "Smallholder participation in vegetable exports and age‐disaggregated labor allocation in Northern Tanzania," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(5), pages 549-562, September.
    4. Bezu, Sosina & Holden, Stein, 2014. "Are Rural Youth in Ethiopia Abandoning Agriculture?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 259-272.
    5. Bezu, Sosina & Barrett, Christopher B., 2010. "Activity Choice in Rural Non-farm Employment (RNFE): Survival versus accumulative strategy," MPRA Paper 55034, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Nandika S. Kumanayake & Jonna P. Estudillo & Keijiro Otsuka, 2014. "Changing Sources of Household Income, Poverty, and Sectoral Inequality in Sri Lanka, 1990–2006," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 52(1), pages 26-51, March.
    7. Dil Bahadur Rahut & Khondoker Abdul Mottaleb & Akhter Ali, 2018. "Rural Livelihood Diversification Strategies and Household Welfare in Bhutan," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 30(4), pages 718-748, September.
    8. Ayenew, Habtamu Yesigat & Sauer, Johannes & Abate-Kassa, Getachew, 2016. "Rural Non-Farm Sector, Agricultural Self-Employment And Wage Employment In Agricultural Households: The Implications For Income And Risk In Rural Ethiopia," 56th Annual Conference, Bonn, Germany, September 28-30, 2016 244809, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA).
    9. Vatta, K & Singh, G & Sharma, N & Bhoi, PB, 2018. "Regional dimensions and determinants of income diversification in rural India," Agricultural Economics Research Review, Agricultural Economics Research Association (India), vol. 31(2).
    10. Loening, Josef & Rijkers, Bob & Soderbom, Mans, 2008. "Nonfarm microenterprise performance and the investment climate : evidence from rural Ethiopia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4577, The World Bank.
    11. Anjani Kumar & Nijara Deka & Seema Bathla & Sunil Saroj & S. K. Srivastava, 2020. "Rural Non-farm Employment in Eastern India: Implications for Economic Well-being," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 63(3), pages 657-676, September.
    12. Jan Fałkowski & Maciej Jakubowski & Paweł Strawiński, 2014. "Returns from income strategies in rural Poland," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 22(1), pages 139-178, January.
    13. Zeeshan & Geetilaxmi Mohapatra & Arun Kumar Giri, 2022. "How Farm Household Spends Their Non-farm Incomes in Rural India? Evidence from Longitudinal Data," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(4), pages 1967-1996, August.
    14. Andaleeb Rahman & Sumit Mishra, 2020. "Does Non-farm Income Affect Food Security? Evidence from India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(6), pages 1190-1209, June.
    15. Van den Broeck, Goedele & Swinnen, Johan & Maertens, Miet, 2017. "Global value chains, large-scale farming, and poverty: Long-term effects in Senegal," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 97-107.
    16. Nguyen, Huy, 2014. "The effect of land fragmentation on labor allocation and the economic diversity of farm households: The case of Vietnam," MPRA Paper 57521, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Kiros Tsegay & Hongzhong Fan & AM Priyangani Adikari & Hailay Shifare, 2021. "Does gender matter for household livelihood diversification in Ethiopia rural areas?," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 10(6), pages 221-232, September.
    18. Paul Winters & Timothy Essam & Alberto Zezza & Benjamin Davis & Calogero Carletto, 2010. "Patterns of Rural Development: A Cross‐Country Comparison using Microeconomic Data," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(3), pages 628-651, September.
    19. Nkechi S. Owoo & Wim Naudé, 2017. "Spatial proximity and firm performance: evidence from non-farm rural enterprises in Ethiopia and Nigeria," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(5), pages 688-700, May.
    20. Riithi, Alexander Njuguna & Irungu, Patrick & Munei , Kimpei, 2015. "Determinants Of Choice Of Alternative Livelihood Diversification Strategies In Solio Resettlement Scheme, Kenya," Dissertations and Theses 269714, University of Nairobi, Department of Agricultural Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Farmers;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sch:wpaper:388. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: B B Chand (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iseccin.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.