Mitigating farm risk: Finance can be more helpful than agri economists

The financial markets have more-or-less stamped out uncertainty, and that can offer a lesson for reducing agricultural risk

A few days ago, a very good friend, whom I had known for 52 years, passed away. He was an agricultural economist by training, academic by profession, and policymaker by preference. He had been in several important positions in the government.

Every now and then, I would rib him about his chosen branch of economics. The question I would ask-which wasn't a fair one-was this: why don't agricultural economists make any difference to Indian agriculture, whose problem has remained the same for a thousand years, namely, high and volatile risk?

He would answer it in his customary, gentle way. But his answers