Agribusiness crisis in imposition times: evidence from rural Assam, India

Using farm-level primary data collected from the central Brahmaputra valley of Assam, the study aims at examining the determinants of the agribusiness crisis following the imposition of pandemic-induced national lockdown. The estimated results showed that income loss was directly associated with the value of damaged perishable food crops across the farm households. Besides marketing inconveniences during the lockdown period, a significant section of farmers reported limited access to storage facilities and the absence of any processing facility at the village level contributed towards damage of the perishable food crops at the harvesting stage. Policies in the promotion of agribusiness through the creation of rural marketing infrastructures such as storage and processing units may serve as an alternative destination of harvested food crops for farmers rather excessively reliant on conventional local markets under situation of emergency.