Market Impacts of Technological Change for Sorghum in Indian Near-Subsistence Agriculture

Abstract

Evaluating market impacts of technological change for near-subsistence crops like sorghum in semiarid tropical India is complicated because of diversified agriculture, geographically isolated markets, and therefore feedbacks through prices, and producer-demander income links for such products. Dynamic simulations with a multicommodity market model suggest that increased sorghum productivity would have spillover effects on other markets, increase the welfare of sorghum consumers, and probably lower the sorghum price. Contrary to speculations of some experts, the output gain probably would be greater than the pure productivity effect despite the price decline because of induced input allocations favoring sorghum production