Which macroeconomic variables could/would best explain the changes in land use and cropping pattern in agriculture? Factors like nearness to market, access to credit, family income are microeconomic variables that could be obtained by survey. If instead, one wishes to model the whole economy, which factors could be included?
Dear Balaji,
I think you can consider as many factors as possible and using the MCA you could filter out the critical ones. However to add the few you could look into policies - land policies (land tenure systems); market volatility that affects the demand for crops to be planted given the perceived benefits of a new crop/plan, e.g. food vs biofuels crops; trade trends; investments risks management, etc.
You could look at the role of GDP per capita on the consumption of meat and milk, and the impact that this has on land-use.
Hi Peter & Kenneth,
Thanks for reply. Modelling land use for a district or region seems to be easy as the researcher could gather all the information he wants. Rather, study that depends secondary data needs to assume more proxies than the actual variables. I'm concerned more on choice variables than the method of estimation. Could you give some information on such literature?
I am assuming, you have already taken the population growth and the in vestments in the rural roads. both may have lagged effects depending on the nature of growth.
Hi Suresh,
Thanks for suggestion. No doubt on population growth. I am, so far, not aware of the data availability on rural roads, at state levels. But it has occupied its place much literature trying to explain agricultural growth. And, And its interactions are much broader, say, it links a farmer to a market, and it helps him to get his employment out of agriculture too (in RNF sector). Can u suggest how to calculate total labor force in agriculture for each state? So that, labor force in farm and non-farm sectors can be used as a variable too. Is it possible to derive from NSS Surveys? Thanks in advance........
I have not looked at NSS data recently. it may have the variables you are looking for. but the labor data is also not that highly dis aggregated. this is a problem in most data sets.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Agriculture