Crop Diversification as a Risk Mitigation Mechanism in Flood Affected Agriculture: A Study of Assam Plains in Northeast India

Abstract

Among various risks to which farmers are exposed, production risk arising from vagaries of weather is very serious. Such risks are further accentuated for farmers in flood prone areas. Diversification is often adopted as a strategy to combat risk. This paper seeks to investigate whether farmers exposed to flood risks have adopted crop diversification as a strategy to cope with such risks. The study is based on sample survey of farmers in Assam plains in Northeast India where floods occur every year but with differences in timing, intensity and frequency. Crop diversification has been measured by composite entropy index which has been regressed on the possible determinants of crop diversification using censored regression model. The flood proneness as a proxy for flood induced production risk has been captured in the analysis by using suitable dummies after categorizing sample locations into chronically flood prone, occasionally flood prone and flood free areas. The analysis of observations on a cross section of 342 randomly selected farms reveals that crop diversification has been adopted to cope with flood induced limits in agriculture. But farmers with better irrigation facility and access to institutional credit are more successful in diversifying their cropping pattern away from food grains to non food grains and within food grains from winter paddy to summer paddy. Hence policy interventions are recommended for enhancing farmers' access to both these facilities. However, provisioning such facilities in flood prone areas poses considerable challenges. The geographical conditions in flood prone areas, especially chronically flood prone areas pose additional challenge in creating and maintaining irrigation facilities. In this regard innovation in agricultural engineering is called for.