Farm Size And Productivity

This book seeks to examine the nature and dynamics of the farm size-productivity relationship, which is one of the central questions in Indian agriculture. It is generally believed that big farms are more productive than small farms. In 1962, noble laureate A. K. Sen’s seminal paper on the subject busted this popularly held view. He put forth the thesis that Indian agriculture exhibits inverse farm size productivity relationship, implying thereby that small farms produce more output per acre as compared to big farms. With the advent of Green revolution technology, this debate once again erupted among the Indian economists. Green Revolution was most successful in Punjab, the frontrunner in the usage of modern agricultural practices and modern farm machinery. Therefore, Punjab was the state which could provide the best insight into the farm size-productivity relationship under Green Revolution. This book makes an effort to test whether the farm size-productivity inverse relationship that existed in traditional Indian agriculture is still holding on in this modern period or had disappeared, with Punjab as the focus of study.