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With research staff from more than 70 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Timothy Thomas

Timothy Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow in the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit. His research focuses on the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity. Tim’s work involves developing innovative methods for simulated climate futures and model coordination between climate, crop, water, energy, and economics.

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Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

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IFPRI currently has more than 480 employees working in over 70 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Publications

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Journal Article

Farmers’ preferences and willingness to accept incentives for adopting sustainable agricultural practices in India

2026TM, Kiran Kumara; Birthal, Pratap Singh; Veettil, Prakashan Chellattan; Meena, Dinesh Chand; Kumar, Anjani
Details

Farmers’ preferences and willingness to accept incentives for adopting sustainable agricultural practices in India

Sustainable agricultural practices are increasingly promoted to mitigate the impacts of climate change on agriculture. However, adoption at the farm level remains limited, often due to trade-offs between tradable and non-tradable ecosystem services. This study examines farmers’ preferences for resource conservation practices and their willingness to accept incentive payments for their adoption in the Indian state of Punjab, where rice has become the most important crop despite its cultivation being unsupportive of its climatic conditions. Following the discrete choice experiment approach, the study included 500 farmers with the following attributes: ecosystem service benefits, income compensation, and carbon credit price. The findings reveal that farmers showed a strong preference for adopting improved farm practices. Saving water and avoiding residue burning are the two most preferred ecosystem benefits by the farmers. However, farmers’ preferences are strongly influenced by factors including carbon credit prices, income compensation, socioeconomic characteristics, and their risk aversion capacity. The estimation of extended random parameter logit (RPL) indicated that switching to direct rice seeding requires compensation of Rs. 29,223/ha and Rs. 29,178/ha for reallocating area from rice to legumes, ceteris paribus. These findings are crucial for policymakers in restructuring the existing incentive structure to accelerate the adoption of resource conservation practices in India.

Year published

2026

Authors

TM, Kiran Kumara; Birthal, Pratap Singh; Veettil, Prakashan Chellattan; Meena, Dinesh Chand; Kumar, Anjani

Citation

TM, Kiran Kumara; Birthal, Pratap Singh; Veettil, Prakashan Chellattan; Meena, Dinesh Chand; and Kumar, Anjani. 2026. Farmers’ preferences and willingness to accept incentives for adopting sustainable agricultural practices in India. Discover Sustainability 7(1): 465. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-02843-4

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Capacity Building; Farmers; Sustainable Agriculture; Good Agricultural Practices; Incentives; Logit Analysis

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-02843-4 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Journal Article

Do precision land management technologies improve farm efficiency? Evidence from laser land levelling in India

2026Kapoor, Shreya; Kumar, Anjani
Details

Do precision land management technologies improve farm efficiency? Evidence from laser land levelling in India

Context: The Indian agriculture system is increasingly constrained by resources and climate vulnerability, with rapid groundwater depletion. This is creating an urgency for adoption of resource-efficient agricultural technologies to address sustainability challenges in intensively irrigated systems. Laser land levelling (LLL) has emerged as a prominent resource and precision land management technology. Objective: The study tries to examine the key determinants of LLL adoption and its impact on paddy productivity in Punjab. Secondly, the study also evaluates the technical efficiency of LLL in paddy production. Finally, we examine heterogeneity in technical efficiency outcomes separately for marginal landholders to assess whether the efficiency gains from LLL adoption vary by farm size. Methods: Primary survey data is collected from 885 farmers from 12 districts in Punjab, India. The sample comprises of 527 (60%) adopters and 358 (40%) non-adopters of LLL. We use a probit model to identify the key drivers of adoption and derive the inverse mills ratio for correcting the sample selection bias. The, we use propensity score matching to estimate causal impact of LLL adoption on paddy yield. Finally, we apply the stochastic production frontier framework with sample-selection correction to evaluate the technical efficiency levels. Results and Conclusions: The findings highlight that LLL adoption increases paddy yield by 2.64 quintals/acre. Efficiency estimates show that adopters achieve approximately 3% higher technical efficiency compared to non-adopters. Moreover, adoption decisions are influenced by structural and asset-related factors, including education, landholding size, and ownership of tractors and pumpsets. Notably, efficiency gains are larger for the marginal farmers, suggesting that smaller landholders may have greater scope of improvements from LLL adoption. Significance: This study contributes two fold: It provides a new empirical evidence on the determinants and impact of LLL adoption in paddy cultivation. Secondly, we develop an integrated econometric framework to address selection bias and evaluate efficiency outcomes of LLL adoption. The study highlights the multidimensional benefits of LLL in enhancing productivity and efficiency, supporting its promotion as a climate-smart technology in improving resource-use efficiency and reducing groundwater stress in rice-based farming systems in India.

Year published

2026

Authors

Kapoor, Shreya; Kumar, Anjani

Citation

Kapoor, Shreya; and Kumar, Anjani. 2026. Do precision land management technologies improve farm efficiency? Evidence from laser land levelling in India. Agricultural Systems 239(December 2026): 104927. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2026.104927

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Capacity Building; Land Management; Farms; Efficiency; Land Levelling Equipment; Land Levelling; Precision Agriculture; Rice Fields; Rice; Stochastic Models

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2026.104927 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

After quantification: Insights from India’s Soil Health Card scheme

2026Ghosh, Ritwick; Nehring, Ryan; Zhang, Wei
Details

After quantification: Insights from India’s Soil Health Card scheme

As the concept of soil health gains prominence, it becomes increasingly important to examine how states design and implement soil health policies. Does soil health offer a novel pathway to enact and legitimize institutional changes toward more sustainable farming systems, or does it risk becoming another neologism that preserves status quo, productivist agriculture? We explore these questions through an analysis of one of the most ambitious state-led initiatives organized around soil health: India’s Soil Health Card (SHC) scheme. The SHC scheme seeks to provide every farmer in the country with bi-annual soil test reports, based on the assumption that improved information will encourage more judicious use of fertilizers and pesticides. The assumption reflects a broader emphasis within the agricultural sciences on the importance of quantifying soil health. Drawing on government documents and farmer perception studies (n = 38), we find that although farmers view the cards positively, they make few substantive changes to their farming practices. As an illustrative case, India’s grand SHC scheme shows that quantification alone is insufficient and could even dampen momentum for transformative policy reforms. Effective and durable change lies in pairing efforts to quantify soil health with (a) plural epistemic approaches to knowledge production, (b) participatory models for knowledge dissemination, and (c) structural reforms in the agri-food system that address issues around land tenure and subsidies.

Year published

2026

Authors

Ghosh, Ritwick; Nehring, Ryan; Zhang, Wei

Citation

Ghosh, Ritwick; Nehring, Ryan; and Zhang, Wei. 2026. After quantification: Insights from India’s Soil Health Card scheme. Land Use Policy 169(October 2026): 108147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2026.108147

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Project Evaluation; Soil Health; Agricultural Policies; Environmental Policies; Sustainable Agriculture; Governance

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2026.108147 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

From satellite images to real-world impact: How IFPRI's collaboration with Dvara opened new doors for Odisha's marginalized farmers
Research Post
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August 25, 2026

From satellite images to real-world impact: How IFPRI’s collaboration with Dvara opened new doors for Odisha’s marginalized farmers

By Berber Kramer, Senthil Kumar Sankararaju, and Tarun Katoch

Research helps expand access to credit.

Collaborative leadership strengthens research capacity and climate action: Lessons from Tamil Nadu, India
Research Post
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August 21, 2026

Collaborative leadership strengthens research capacity and climate action: Lessons from Tamil Nadu, India

By Suresh Babu, D. Suresh Kumar, and Sudha Narayanan

Building more robust local institutions.

Understanding soil health in practice: Insights from India’s Soil Health Card scheme
Research Post
 | 
August 10, 2026

Understanding soil health in practice: Insights from India’s Soil Health Card scheme

By Ritwick Ghosh, Wei Zhang, Upeksha Hettiarachchi, Francis Phillip, and Ryan Nehring

Effects of a top-down approach.

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Events

Double exposure: How El Niño and the Iran crisis could reshape food security
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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October 8, 2026, 9:30 – 11:00 am

Double exposure: How El Niño and the Iran crisis could reshape food security

Please type your questions into the chat box with name, affiliation, and country. The event video, presenter slides, and podcast will be available in the days following the event. Both El Niño and the ongoing crisis in Iran threaten to disrupt the global food system and affect food prices through impacts on agricultural production, energy […]

IFPRI @ Tropentag 2026
IFPRI at External Event

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September 16 to 18, 2026

IFPRI @ Tropentag 2026

IFPRI is pleased to participate in Tropentag 2026, taking place September 16–18, 2026, in Göttingen, Germany. The annual interdisciplinary conference focuses on research in tropical and subtropical agriculture, natural resource management, and rural development. This year’s conference will be held under the theme “Towards multi-functional agro-ecosystems promoting climate-resilient futures.” Tropentag 2026 will highlight interdisciplinary research […]

IFPRI @ Global Conference on Women in Agri-Food Systems (GCWAS-2026)
IFPRI at External Event

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March 12 to 14, 2026

IFPRI @ Global Conference on Women in Agri-Food Systems (GCWAS-2026)

IFPRI is pleased to be a co-organizer of the Global Conference on Women in Agrifood Systems (GCWAS 2026) that will be held in New Delhi, India from March 12-14, 2026. The Global Conference on Women in Agrifood Systems (GCWAS 2026) will bring together diverse stakeholders, including women leaders, scientists, entrepreneurs, farmers, and students, to share […]

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News

August 21, 2026 | In the News

The fight over eggs in school meals (The Star)

The article cites a 2021 IFPRI study that found India’s Mid-Day Meal Scheme has played an important role in reducing child stunting.

August 19, 2026 | In the News

Widening waistline: India’s big, fat obesity hotspots may not be just the biggest cities anymore (The Economic Times)

The article cites IFPRI experts in a feature examining India’s rising obesity rates, particularly in rural areas.

July 01, 2026 | In the News

India’s growth story has a child nutrition problem (The Wire/IndiaSpend)

The article quotes IFPRI’s Purnima Menon who stresses the importance of maternal health, healthcare access and child feeding practices.

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Projects

Soil Health and Gender

Soil Health and Gender

IFPRI’s Research Initiative on Closing the Gender and Youth Gap for Healthier Soils develops evidence on how empowering women and youth can improve soil health……

Strengthening Women’s Advancement and Resilience in Agriculture (SWARNA)

Strengthening Women’s Advancement and Resilience in Agriculture (SWARNA)

The Gender Responsive Cell (GRC), supported by the SWARNA project, aims to institutionalize gender-responsive governance within the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment (DA&FE), Government……

Irrigation as a Service for Small-Scale Producers: Advancing Equity and Women’s Empowerment

Irrigation as a Service for Small-Scale Producers: Advancing Equity and Women’s Empowerment

Small-scale irrigation provides benefits for productivity, income, food security, nutrition, and resilience to climate shocks. However, women often face greater constraints than men to accessing……

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