‘Sticky Rice’: Variety inertia and groundwater crisis in a technologically progressive state of India

Kuhu Joshi, Pramod Kumar Joshi, Md. Tajuddin Khan and Avinash Kishore

No 1766, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: This paper studies the high adoption of Pusa 44, a long-duration and old rice variety cultivated in Punjab, despite the availability of new short-duration varieties and the overall technological advancement of agriculture. We use farm-household data from a primary survey conducted in 2016-17. Pusa 44 yields on average 2.5 quintals higher per hectare than competing short-duration variety PR 121. It also consumes 16 percent additional water because of its longer duration. As energy for groundwater irrigation is provided tariff-free by the state, Pusa 44 farmers obtain higher net returns even though they pump additional groundwater. Consequently, they have little economic incentive to switch to new short-duration varieties. This varietal stickiness is a pressing policy issue considering the ongoing groundwater crisis in the state. We show that Punjab currently incurs an additional energy-subsidy cost of US$ 49 million per annum on irrigating Pusa 44. Future costs will continue to multiply unless farmers are incentivized to switch to short-duration rice varieties.

Keywords: energy policies; technology adoption; hybrids; rice; capacity development; crop yield; energy for agriculture; water resources; innovation adoption; subsidies; water use; India; Southern Asia; Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/146509

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1766

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().