The post WTO policy reforms in the field of agricultural trade induced changes in the institutional and market conditions that led to the entry of the private sector in agribusiness and brought a shift in the relative position of different players in the market. It has created sharp discontinuities in the role of the state and the functioning of the market.

The last three decades have witnessed an expansion in the domain and scope of microfinance activities shaping policy discussions as well as delivery systems within and across many national contexts.

Wheat is an important cereal crop in world trade grown on approximately 220 million ha area in the world. In the South Asian region, rice-wheat cropping system occupies 24 million hectares of area and India has 10 million hectares. The western states of India are, in general, characterised by low productivity, low investment and low crop income for a long time.

The overall picture regarding land use patterns in India constitutes divergent situations in regard to land use patterns across different states. There is a high degree of concentration of major land use classes in a few states. For instance, the area under the forests are mostly concentrated in the hilly states and also in states having a large number of tribal districts.

The policy on agricultural credit in India has been guided mainly by the considerations of ensuring an adequate and timely availability of credit at reasonable rates through the expansion of the institutional framework, its outreach and scale as also by way of directed lending.

The non-farm sector is fast emerging as an important component of developing rural economies, with an increasing number of rural workers seeking their livelihoods in this sector.

India had developed a vast and rich traditional agricultural knowledge since ancient times and is presently finding solutions to problems created by the over use of agrochemicals. An important event in the history of the modern nascent organic farming in India was the unveiling of the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) in 2000.

Livelihood security has been interpreted in different ways by various scholars.

Farming is a multifold activity and the prime occupation of the majority of people living in rural India. It is important to develop an ideal agricultural production plan which can provide at least the minimum requirement of a farm family in terms of food, fuel and fibre.

The prime objective of the study is to estimate and compare the CO2 and carbon emission by direct use of fossil fuels in farm operations under the conventional and resource conservation systems in major wheat growing regions of India.

Pages