Reconsidering Post Green Revolution Food Choices: New Processing Technologies and Food Security in India

• Author / Creator

  Miller-Tait, Evan J

• Finger millet (known as ragi) is a traditional grain that is more nutritious and more tolerant to environmental shocks than high yielding rice and wheat varieties. Accordingly, the promotion of ragi has been identified as an intervention that could improve the food security of households in India. Despite these benefits, ragi has largely been replaced by subsidized green revolution grains. To promote ragi consumption, scholars have advocated the introduction of innovations in processing ragi into flour. We investigate the determinants that drive households’ use of ragi processing technology using a primary, georeferenced, household-level dataset collected in Kolli Hills, Tamil Nadu. We employ a two-stage technology adoption framework to analyze household-level decisions to produce ragi flour. We also analyze patterns of self-selection, which are caused by unobserved heterogeneity, to infer whether households with higher levels of welfare have a higher propensity to access these technologies.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Rural India
  • Technology Adoption
  • Household Welfare
  • Flour Production
  • Ragi
  • Selection Effects
  • Finger Millet
  • Eleusine coracana

• Graduation date

  Fall 2013

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R30G3H86H

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.