Utpal Kumar De and Kamal Bodosa
This paper tried to analyse the spatio-temporal trend of crop diversification in Assam over the last fifty years. It is pursued through changes in land allocation for the cultivation of various crops and also examined by the changing index of crop diversification. Here, Herfindahl Index is used to understand diversification and locational quotient is used to measure regional crop concentration. The result shows that in almost all districts, crop specialization has been taking place and more so in the last phase of our study period. The hilly and backward districts recorded more diversification but towards lower value crops, in accordance with the changing water availability, weather pattern, access to credit and risk. It goes against the normal feature of crop diversification where farmers diversify in favour of high value crops. Employing Random Effect GLS Robust Regression and Fixed Effect Model, irrigation, chemical fertilizer and growing erratic rainfall found to play important role in determining inter-zonal variation in crop diversification. However, the slow progress of irrigation did not help in crop diversity, particularly in off-monsoon seasons.