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Socio-Economic
and Policy Issues
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The
short-and long-term food security, sustainability and economic
growth considerations underscore the importance of rice-wheat
cropping systems in all the four consortium countries. Pushing
the technical potential for production further through agro-biological
research is, therefore, critical. This has to be contextually
relevant and therefore an understanding of the socio-economic
environment and its interactions with production systems was
essential. These factors also determine the efficacy of technology
generation and transfer processes. Involvement of socio-economists
in problem identification and design of agricultural research
and economic analysis of the results greatly improves the relevance
of agricultural research and facilitate its transfer. We believe
that it is not enough to stop here; socioeconomic input is essential
for identifying non-technological constraints, need interventions,
and for assessing the impact of proposed interventions-technological
or otherwise, on socio-economic parameters. All these add value
to the product of agricultural research.
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Unfortunately,
socio-economic representation and interface with other disciplines
is not very strong in the national agricultural research systems
of South Asia. Without addressing this constraint, it would
be very difficult to strengthen this component in Consortium’s
agenda. Hence, it was decided to identify socioeconomic research
agenda for sustainability of the system in a way as will complement
the research in two broad categories; the first concerned with
disciplinary research describing and analyzing the broad socioeconomic
parameters within which rice-wheat and other systems integrate
overarching research issues; and the second, interdisciplinary
in nature, focusing on economic analysis required for specific
technical themes, like tillage and crop establishment, water
management, nutrient management and pest management.
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Overarching
Research Issues
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The
objectives of research on the overarching issues is to obtain
a better understanding of the socio-economic environment and
its interactions with the production system. This are accomplished
by undertaking studies on a number of themes including (but
not limited to) the following:
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Socioeconomic
characterization of rice-wheat zones and sub-zones within
countries based on secondary data.
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Evaluating
the demand and supply of food grains, pricing of input and
output, trade, infrastructure (e.g., credit, marketing,
irrigation, power) as related to rice-wheat system, production
trends, research and extension policy.
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Agricultural
performance in different sub-zones with analysis of potentials
and constraints (technical as well as socioeconomic).
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Assembling
and analyzing system-level data (rather than crop based
data) to enable sharper focus on input-output, efficiency,
constraints etc.,
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Undertaking
technological and socio-economic factors influencing cropping
pattern changes.
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Economic
evaluation of earlier research on rice-wheat system.
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Macro
level studies on constraints to adoption of improved technologies
for sustainability of Rice-Wheat Cropping Systems.
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