Rapporteur's Report on Agriculture and Farm Livelihood in Disadvantaged Areas: Introspection of Socio-Economic Issues

The underdeveloped agricultural production systems in disadvantaged areas, viz, the hills, coastal, dry and arid regions are characterised by low or zero level of input uses which in turn inhibits the agricultural productivity and generates very low level of marketable surplus. [...]poor infrastructure, history of lower level of policy support, higher frequencies of natural calamities like drought, flood or cyclone, add to the misery of agriculture and people dependent on it. Climate Change, Risk Assessment and Sustainability One paper by Asfika Begum and Ratul Mahanta focused on adaptation measures to cope up the challenge of climate change in three agro-climatic zones of Assam. Sheela Kharkwal and Hamid Nazir wrote an interesting paper where they have grouped the farmers of Kumaon division of Uttrakhand in four clusters of milk producing households based upon socio-economic and farm characteristics using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis.