Sources and Determinants of Agricultural Growth in Uttar Pradesh: Agro-Climatic Zone Level Analysis

The present paper inspects the sources and determinants of agricultural growth for the crop sector in Uttar Pradesh (India) from 2004-05 to 2015-16. The decomposition and panel data regression was used to derive the results at the agro-climatic zone (ACZ) level in Uttar Pradesh. The results revealed that: First, growth prospects via area expansion were limited due to land constraints in all agro-climatic Zones except Zone-2 and 7. Second, agricultural growth decomposing to output prices was the highest in Zone-1 and 5 while lowest in Zone-7 and 8. Third, agricultural growth had the highest stake in yields in agro-climatic Zone-8 and 4, while lowest in Zone-2 and 1. Fourth, it was witnessed that diversification was an important source of agricultural growth across all ACZ in Uttar Pradesh. It was also observed that the contribution of various sources to agricultural growth by the crop sector across the various zone level had widespread fluctuations. Moreover, the panel data regression results showed that the rural infrastructure along with mechanization had a positive and significant impact on per ha value of the output of the crop sector while climatic factors viz., temperature difference and rainfall variability agricultural markets per hectare had influenced negatively of per hectare value of output by crop sector. The findings suggested a need to improve the rural infrastructural, institutional, technological, and climatic strengthening through new programmes and policies, directly or indirectly affecting agricultural growth, food security, and farmers' income.