Abstract
Concern about the sustainability of food production has been leading to a revival in the use of organic fertilizer in modern agriculture as this is seen as an appropriate way to maintain soil health. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the role of the demand, supply, and market of farmyard manure (FYM) in maintaining and improving cereal yields by analyzing a data set of farm households from 1993 to 2003 in Tamil Nadu, India. We find the dairy sector development and associated increase in FYM supply contribute to the productivity improvement of upland cereals. However, due to high transportation costs of FYM, the impact is spatially constrained within the small area where dairy sector development has taken place.
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Notes
- 1.
The sampling involves three stages. First, districts are classified into six agro-climatic zones, and then districts in each zone are selected so that the crop area of sample districts becomes proportional to the crop area of the zone. Second, villages in each district are selected so that the crop area of sample villages becomes proportional to the crop area of the district. Third, in each selected village, farming households are selected in accordance with the size of landholdings. The five size classes are operational holdings with areas less than 1 ha, between 1 and 2 ha, between 2 and 4 ha, between 4 and 6 ha, and greater than 6 ha. In each size class, two households are selected by simple random sampling, generating a sample of ten farmers in each village. If in any village a particular size class does not contain even two households, more households are selected from the adjacent size group to make up for the deficit. The data for 2004 of the 2002–2004 round panel are not available yet. We treat this set also as a 2-year panel.
- 2.
The agricultural census was available in 1976–1977, 1985–1986, and 1995–1996. We rely on the 1995–1996 census as it is the nearest to the period of our analyses (1993–2003).
- 3.
The existence of improved cows and buffaloes in LDD in the first period seems to be related with the persisting impact of the strong supports by the government for the achievement of White Revolution.
- 4.
According to a local specialist on FYM, the nutritional composition of FYM is as follows. Nitrogen (0.15–0.75%), Phosphorus (0.1–0.6%), Potash (0.75–1.8%), Calcium (<0.1%), Magnesium (<0.1%), Ferrous (200 PPM), Born and Zink (<5PPM), Organic carbon (0.5–1.5%).
- 5.
For those who applied FYM (i.e., FYM input >0), 7.62 t ha−1 is applied to paddy and 6.17 t ha−1 for upland cereals on average.
- 6.
In the CCPC scheme, a change in any kind of stock during the survey year is recorded in a separate survey module.
- 7.
Ghosh (2004) find the same complementarities in his estimation of quadratic paddy yield function, although it is a cross-section analysis.
- 8.
A puzzling result is that although the impact of FYM arises only indirectly, farmers apply a substantial amount of FYM to paddy (see Table 10.A.1). A possible reason we find during our field interview is that farmers apply FYM on paddy plot as nutrients will be mixed better in soil during the plowing under flooded condition. On the other hand, when farmers apply FYM on dry land, dried FYM could be brown away. Note that nutrient release is slow under flooded condition. Hence, in this case, farmers expect that the impact of FYM on flooded paddy filed appears in the subsequent crop when it is cultivated under rainfed condition. To examine this point accurately, we need plot level panel data, which are unfortunately unavailable.
- 9.
To compute the village average FYM price, at least one farmer in a village must have record of FYM value. Hence, for this analysis, we excluded the observations in the villages where no one uses FYM at all for any purposes. The sample size is reduced from 2,445 to 1,294 for paddy, from 555 to 199 for upland cereals, and from 345 to 110 for sorghum.
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Kajisa, K., Palanichamy, N.V. (2013). Chemical Fertilizer, Organic Fertilizer, and Cereal Yields in India. In: Otsuka, K., Larson, D. (eds) An African Green Revolution. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5760-8_10
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