Growth Decomposition of Foodgrains Output in West Bengal: A District Level Study

Abstract

Decomposition of output growth is not a new concept in the field of agricultural growth analysis. Still, it has its usual importance to the researchers and policy makers for identifying the root causes of high and low growth of agricultural output. Basically decomposition analysis is a post-Independence phenomenon. This paper attempts a component-wise analysis of the growth of foodgrains output valued at constant prices for the state of West Bengal and its districts during the time period 1970-71 to 1999-2000. One additive decomposition model without any arbitrary residual term has been developed in a double kink linear framework. The factors identified for output decomposition are area, yield and cropping pattern. The reason behind the use of additive model is the nature of the growth trends (double kink linear). The decomposition model with the interaction term has certain disadvantages as it either underestimates or over-estimates the pure effect of the variable. In the multiplicative framework, consistent decomposition model without any interaction term has been introduced for the first time by Jamal and Asad (1992), but to the best of our knowledge, no such attempt has been made in the additive framework. Consistent decomposition of output growth with the appropriate additive model without any interaction term is the modest attempt of the present work. The planning of the paper is as follows. After the brief introduction of Section I, an overview of literature is presented in Section II. Section III discusses the methods of analysis. Results of decomposition model and discussion thereon are presented in Section IV, while Section V summarises the findings of the study.