Operational Efficiency, Economic Performance and Social Significance of GALASA Style Rice Production in Indian Agriculture

抄録

Galasa is the abbreviation for “Group Approach for Locally Adapted and Sustainable Agriculture”. The present study is aimed at establishing the viewpoint that the Galasa of rice farmers in the Kerala state of India is an operationally efficient, economically productive and socially beneficial agricultural production practice. The field survey covered 120 farmers, who were operating in the Galasa rice fields and adjacent locations in the Palakkad District of Kerala state. Applying the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a non-parametric frontier tool, the study proved that Galasa is an efficient agricultural production practice in terms of all efficiency measurements such as technical, scale, cost and allocative efficiencies. Boosting the rice yield from 3,287 kg/ha to 6,449 kg/ha and ensuring four times improvement in the profit, Galasa helps sustaining rice production in the state where foodgrain deficiency rose up to 80% of the total demand. On achieving the full-scale yield potential, Galasa can promote Kerala's self-sufficiency on foodgrains by reducing the deficiency level to 49%. Galasa, which insists organic farming and encourages the preservation of the remaining 310,521 hectares of area under rice, can contribute significantly to the environmental sustainability. By preventing the fast disappearance of rice fields, Galasa can also absorb 9.49% of the total agricultural labourers in Kerala. In summary, Galasa has to be widely adopted as a pragmatic approach for the sustenance of rice production in an economically productive manner. With its state-wide replication, Galasa could be a panacea for some of the persistent problems like foodgrain deficiency, unemployment and environmental degradation.