ICAR

Drylands make up 41% of the world land, 44% of the cultivated land, one-third of the world food production and 50% of the world livestock. They are home to 2.3 billion people, of which about 50% are living in poverty. 66% of Africa and 40% of Asia are drylands. Farm distress is more concentrated in drylands in India. Farm distress in drylands was caused by frequent droughts and consequent crop failures.

Since the last two decades, there are number of crop insurance schemes to mitigate crop losses, but their effect in alleviating farm distress is not studied thoroughly.

This study aims to assess crop insurance coverage among dryland farmers, explore farmers understanding about various risk types, identify the mitigation and adoption strategies and lastly, it develops farmer distress index to measure the degree of farm distress.