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The mobile phone-enabled information delivery mechanism has the potential to reduce the knowledge gap between large and small farmers, and also across gender by creating awareness about new technologies and best practices. This article focuses on how access to information through the mobile phone makes women feel empowered if they are receptive to the information they receive. It also seeks to find out the type of information most valuable to women. This was done by analyzing the listening behavior of farmers, both men and women, to information provided by mobile phones. This study was undertaken in the selected villages in two states of India-Haryana and Bihar. The findings of the study show that information delivered through mobile phones under this pilot project contributed towards reducing information asymmetry among farmers, in general, and between women and men farmers. The listening rate of women farmers was equivalent to that of men farmers. Participating farmers reported that precise and timely weather-based agro-advisory messages helped them in taking informed decisions about input use, thus leading to savings on irrigation and reducing the cost of other inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers.

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Evidence from climate-smart village (CSV) approach to mainstream climate-smart agriculture (CSA) demonstrates improved productivity, income, and reduced climatic risks. However, its contribution to gender empowerment in diverse farming households is not documented. This study creates a Gender Empowerment Index for climate-smart villages (GEI-CSV) based on four major measurable indicators-political, economic, agricultural, and social. The gender gap was derived by mapping difference in empowerment levels across selected CSVs and non-CSVs. These indicators can be used as a vital tool to understand the process of gender empowerment that can trigger the entry points to achieve gender equality, which is also an important aspect in the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices (CSAPs). The study measures empowerment at the inter-household and intra-household level across CSVs and non-CSVs from the individual household survey with both female and male members of the same household. This paper provides evidence demonstrating how gender empowerment differs in CSVs and non-CSVs from selected climate-smart villages (community-based approach) in two contrasting ecologies and socioeconomic settings of India. The study documents the existing gender gap in CSVs and non-CSVs across India's western (Haryana) and eastern (Bihar) Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP). Irrespective of CSVs and non-CSVs, considerable differences in outlook and gender gap were observed between Bihar and Haryana. Both women and men in Bihar are less empowered than they are in Haryana. High empowerment level in CSVs than non-CSVs shows that the concept of CSVs has brought a change towards knowledge and capacity enhancement of both women and men farmers promoting gender equality in farming households with a varying scope of interventions made and required for scaling CSAPs across the diversity of farming households.

Rich-country support programs for cotton and sugar producers are frequently claimed to be detrimental for developing-country farmers. This study investigates whether a reduction in protectionist policies for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development cotton and sugar producers would have a measurable effect on the welfare of Indian farmers. The fact that these sectors are intensively regulated within India might suggest that any such effect will be small. However, this study shows econometrically that prices in Indian rural markets closely follow world prices, and that Indian farmers are flexible in the medium to long run in changing production according to price signals from these markets. Depending on the crop and the nature of liberalization, producer surplus increases from 4.2% to 22.3% in the long run.JEL classification: F1, Q1

In this study, adoption rates of modern wheat varieties in India have been estimated using expert elicitation methodology. The study has found that the wheat varietal output has increased during the period 2010-2015. The most widely cultivated wheat varieties in the study states are HD 2967, PBW 343, PBW 550, Lok 1 and PBW 502. The temporal and spatial diversity indices have been calculated based on the perceived adoption rates. Wheat varietal turnover has been highest in Punjab (7.50 years) and lowest in Rajasthan (19.25 years). The Berger Parker index has shown that relative abundance of varieties was lowest in Punjab (1.76) and highest in Madhya Pradesh (7.10). The concentration of wheat area under dominant varieties was highest in Punjab and lowest in Rajasthan as indicated by the Marglef index. The cultivation of older varieties and dominance of a few varieties deprive the farmers of the advantages of productivity gains, genetic improvement, in addition to increasing crop vulnerability to pests and diseases. The study has concluded that besides varietal development, it is also important to focus on reducing the socioeconomic and institutional barriers to adoption of improved crop varieties. In this direction, it is important to create an enabling institutional environment for increasing the rate of varietal replacement, promote spatial heterogeneity in crop varieties cultivated, identify and effectively bring the potential varieties under the seed chain system and enhance the outreach of improved wheat varieties with an inclusive approach to reach even the resource-poor farmers.