Economic Surplus Approach for Impact Assessment of Soil Reviving Programme in Karnataka: An Economic Analysis

Globally rainfed areas are hotspots of poverty, malnutrition and degradation of natural resources. Government of Karnataka (GoK) has converged all the Government schemes through a mission mode project called as “Bhoochetana” meaning “reviving the soils” to benefit dryland farmers for sustainable use of natural resources in Karnataka. The study aims to estimate the welfare impact of Bhoochetana programme in holistic manner. Multiple regression analysis was employed to evaluate the marginal effect of soil reviving programme among the adopters and non-adopters. The distributional effects of the programme on consumers and producers were assessed with the application of Economic Surplus (ES) model. Field information was composed from 120 farmers covering adopters and non-adopters of the programme. The application of micro nutrients was the major intervention of this programme and it had found to have significant impact on yield and income of selected crops. In groundnut the application of the micronutrients in adopter category resulted in increase in yield of 1.23 quintals extra over and above the non-adopters (5.9 quintals) and the total economic surplus due to adoption of programme was Rs. 2643 million from 2009-10 to 2015-16 with producers (72.56%) benefited relatively more than the consumers (27.43%). Whereas, in case of ragi, the adopters ragi yielded 2.02 quintals extra over and above the non-adopters (6.6 quintals) and distributional effect of consumers (54.93%) profit was relatively more than the producers (45.06%), with total economic surplus of Rs. 1933 million. Therefore, the policy focus must be on creating awareness and adoption of new technologies through developmental programmes in rural areas to reach millions of small farmers.