Does commercial small-scale vegetable farming production enhance farmer welfare?
This project note analyzes links between agricultural commercialization and producer welfare by comparing vegetable farmers with non-vegetable farmers, who mainly grow rice. The following key findings stand out.
Vegetable farming is an engine of smallholder commercialization in Odisha. Vegetable producers sell 74 percent of the vegetables they produce, about double the market surplus for rice.
Vegetable farming households are of modestly higher average socioeconomic status than non-vegetable farmers. They are significantly better educated, more likely to belong to a general caste and less likely to belong to a scheduled tribe, but the size of differences in the characteristics of the two groups is not large.
Access to land, irrigation, and midland plots are strongly associated with the adoption of commercial vegetable farming. Vegetable farmers operate slightly more land, lease in land more frequently, cultivate more midland plots, and are nearly twice as likely to have irrigated land.
Vegetable farming is associated with higher agricultural income, but not total household income. Vegetable farmers earn 24 percent higher agricultural incomes on average, but total household incomes do not differ significantly from those of non-vegetable farmers, likely due to lower participation in non-farm employment.
Vegetable commercialization is associated with better diet quality. Vegetable farming households consume a greater diversity of vegetables more frequently and have significantly higher household diet diversity scores than non-vegetable farmers.
Income inequality is not higher among vegetable adopters. Gini coefficients for agricultural and household income are similar between vegetable and non-vegetable farmers, and similar across blocks with higher an lower concentrations of commercial vegetable cultivation, suggesting that smallholder commercialization has not exacerbated inequality.
Spatial clustering of vegetable production is associated with higher agricultural incomes. Vegetable and non-vegetable farmers in blocks with high concentrations of vegetable farms have higher average agricultural incomes than those in blocks with less vegetable farming. This pattern suggests that links exist between initial conditions such as infrastructure, irrigation, and market access that foster the formation of spontaneous clusters, while intra-cluster features such as MSME density and knowledge spillovers may play a role in deepening agricultural commercialization and raising farm productivity.
Authors
Belton, Ben; Narayanan, Sudha; Dey, Durjoy; Al-Hasan, Md.; Islam, Mir Raihanul; Khan, Asraul Hoque; Mishra, Bhumika
Citation
Belton, Ben; Narayanan, Sudha; Dey, Durjoy; Al-Hasan, Md.; Islam, Mir Raihanul; et al. 2026. Does commercial small-scale vegetable farming production enhance farmer welfare? INCATA Project Note 5. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/181787
Keywords
Asia; Southern Asia; Commercialization; Small-scale Farming; Vegetables; Agricultural Production; Welfare; Income Generation; Diet Quality
