Sustainable Agricultural Management, Productivity Growth and Impact of Climate Change in India's North-East

Sustainable agricultural practices to a large extent determine development prospect of an agricultural economy in terms of food security, employment, income in various agro-climatic conditions of the developing world. During the 2^ndhalf of the last century, significant changes in agricultural productivity, crop diversity and agricultural technology have been observed along with the changes in climatic conditions. This paper examines the growth of agricultural productivity, crop diversity and their regional convergence pattern in India’s North-East. Impacts of changing climatic factors on crop diversity and agricultural productivity have also been examined through a longitudinal data analysis. Finally, farmers’ adaptation towards extreme climatic effects are examined by constructing an adaptation index and analysing a set of primary data on farmers’ various adaptation measures collected from the state of Assam.  

Despite the growth of productivity and changes in cropping pattern, a certain level of regional convergence is observed except for some sub-periods. Also, temperature, and level of precipitation are found to positively affect the crop diversity along with the use of chemical fertiliser. However, in case of composite productivity index; rainfall and temperature in the Khariff season have positive impact on diversity along with chemical fertiliser. But the temperature in the Rabi season is found to have negative impact on productivity in the region. It is also revealed that education of the respondent farmers, farm size, area of holdings and share of family income from agricultural activities have significantly positive impacts on the crop diversification as well as adaptation to moderate the adverse climate impact or avoid climate related disaster. Education helps to improve the knowledge and raise technology adoption capacity and thus helps farmers adapt better to the changing climatic conditions.