This book examines the various issues and concerns faced by Indian agriculture under the obligations of WTO and the Free Trade Agreements. While the issues discussed pertain mainly to India, the lessons can also be derived for many other similarly placed developing countries. The book delves into various aspects of Indian agricultural trade and evaluates the domestic policies and regulations of government while also looking at external factors like WTO, free trade agreements and non-tariff barriers. Chapters of this book have been contributed by eminent agricultural economists, lawyers and social scientists providing the perspective from their sector. This book highlights the challenges and opportunities for agriculture sector under the rapidly growing regional trade agreements and results of negotiations under the WTO. It also provides critical insights into the ongoing fisheries subsidies negotiations at the WTO and issues relating to non-tariff measures. The findings have broad implications for developing countries in general and India in particular. This book will greatly benefit trade negotiators, policymakers, civil society, farmer groups, researchers, students, and academics interested in issues related to the WTO, FTAs, tariff and non-tariff barriers and other allied issues concerning Indian agriculture. The techniques used in analytical part will mostly benefit the researchers as they can not only use these techniques and methodologies for their future research, but to also carry the research forward. The book is useful for many educational institutes which teach international trade, agricultural economics, and WTO and FTAs studies.

This book provides different facets of India's agro and food processing industry in both organised and unorganised segments. It brings forth the topical issues having potential to accelerate the pace of growth in its employment, investment and productivity and strive for improving the global competitiveness. Using advanced quantitative techniques, it brings new evidences on inter-sectoral (agriculture-industry-services) employment and production linkages, contractual arrangements through Farmer Producer Companies, and subcontracting in the processed food sector. It also throws light on India's comparative advantage in export of primary and processed food products. With rising per capita income, urbanisation, and changing food habits of people, India is increasingly striving to improve productivity and competitiveness in agriculture and manufacturing. A concerted policy focus to accelerate private investment in food processing, largely viewed as a sunrise industry, is expected to contribute to large scale job creation and external trade not only in the manufacturing but also in the agricultural sector. Keeping this in mind, considerable insights are featured in the book at the industry and firm levels due to a significant bearing of technological, tariffs and non-tariff barriers and labour regulations on their trade intensity, employment and efficiency. Containing perspectives from the top agriculture and industry economists in the country, the book will be very useful to researchers, academicians, trade analysts and policy makers.

The volume offers to the reader a multi-faceted dialogue between noted experts from two major agricultural countries, both founding members of the Word Trade Organisation, each one with different stakes in the great globalisation game. After providing the recent historical background of agricultural policies in India and France, the contributors address burning issues related to market and regulation, food security and food safety, the expected benefits from the WTO and the genuine problems raised by the new forms of international trade in agriculture, including the sensitive question of intellectual property rights in bio-technologies. This informed volume underlines the necessity of moving beyond the North-South divide, in order to address the real challenges of the future.

This paper reports on an ex-post assessment of IFPRI’s research on High-Value Agriculture (HVA) over 1994–2010. HVA is defined to include perishable agricultural commodities produced for the market that yield high returns to land, labor, or both. IFPRI’s research on HVA has been housed mainly in GRP27 (Participation in high value agricultural markets). Questions for the study included whether IFPRI had the right research strategy for this topic; was focused on the right issues; was a leader in the field; used the most relevant approaches and methods; and was successful in sensitizing/influ-encing the policies of governments, agribusiness, academia, civil society, and the international donor community. Finally, what has been the impact of the HVA policies that IFPRI influenced?

Between 1970 and 2009, India has overcome many infrastructural, market, and institutional challenges to transition from a dairy importing nation to the top producer in the world of both buffalo and goat milk, as well as the sixth largest producer of cow milk. In India, at least 100 million households are involved in farming and 70 million have dairy cattle. In India, dairy production is important for employment, income levels, and the nutritional quality of diets. Milk production in India is dominated by smallholder farmers including landless agricultural workers. For example, 80 percent of milk comes from farms with only two to five cows. A well-known smallholder dairy production initiative, Operation Flood, laid the foundation for a dairy cooperative movement that presently ensures returns on dairy investments to 13 million members. Operation Flood also advanced infrastructural improvements to enable the procurement, processing, marketing, and production of milk and to link India's major metropolitan cities with dairy cooperatives nationwide. This intervention transformed the policy environment, brought significant technological advancements into the rural milk sector, established many village cooperatives, and oriented the dairy industry toward markets.