Drivers of Agricultural Diversification in India, Haryana and the Greenbelt Farms of India

The present study discusses factors responsible for agricultural diversification at different levels: country (India), state (Haryana) and farms of Kurukshetra district in Haryana. The study regressed alternate measures of diversification namely, the Simpson index and concentration of non-food crops, on several possible factors such as income, land distribution, irrigation intensity, institutional credit, road density, urbanization and market penetration. The regression analysis suggests that increased road density, urbanization encourages commercialization of agriculture and with commercialization, farms in a region are increasingly specialized under certain crops and crop-groups as per the resource, infrastructure and institutions of the region.