Indian agriculture is dominated by smallholders - of the total 101 million farm households 86 percent have land holdings of less than or equal to 2 ha, and their average size of land holding is 0.53 ha (Government of India (GoI), 2006a). How long can these households survive cultivating such tiny pieces of land? Should they exit agriculture or diversify their production portfolio towards commodities that have a greater potential for returns to land, labor and capital? Given past trend in transfer of labor from agriculture to other economic sectors2
1 National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi 110 012 (India) 2 Proportion of workers engaged in agriculture came down from 68.5 percent in 1983 to 56.5 percent in 2004-05 (Nagaraj, 2007). , option to exit agriculture seems difficult. (...)