Weather Risk in Rainfed Agriculture: A Study on Rice, Maize and Bajra in Odisha Paltasingh Kirtti Ranjan, Goyari Phanindra Department of Economics, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad-500 046, Andhra Pradesh Online published on 9 October, 2012. Abstract The sources of risk in agricultural cultivation are many, some of which are variations in prices, government policies, weather, etc. This paper has examined the risk attached with weather variables in the rainfed agriculture of Odisha. The study examines the effects of climatic factors along with other non-climatic factors on the mean yield and variance of yield in case of three food crops, viz., rice, maize and bajra, using the three-stage generalized stochastic production function suggested by Just and Pope. Estimation results were crop-specific and varied from one crop to the other. For rice, precipitation and temperature during the sowing period depicted a yield declining effect while the temperature at the growing period had a favourable effect on yield. For maize and bajra, precipitation during the sowing period affected the crops negatively while during the growing period, it depicted a positive effect. The temperature also showed similar effects on yield variability. Results of climate change forecasting in two scenarios have revealed that rice would be more badly affected than other two crops. Top Keywords Agriculture, weather risk, stochastic production function, forecasting, rice, maize, bajra, Odisha. Top |