Assessment of Growth Rate and Instability of Groundnut Production in Odisha, India: A Statistical Modelling Approach

Oilseeds in Odisha has a major contribution in increasing the income of farmers which is due to their greater economic value. The important oilseed crops grown in Odisha are groundnut, mustard, sunflower, sesamum and castor. Groundnut shares 34% of total area under oilseeds in Odisha and 64% of total production of oilseeds in the state. The present makes an attempt to explore the best fit model on area, productivity and production of groundnut in Odisha and use the selected best fit model to estimate the growth rate of the variables. The instability of area, productivity and production of groundnut in Odisha is also studied with help of coefficient of variation.

Data from 1970-71 to 2019-20 have been used to estimate the growth rate and instability by dividing the whole period of study in two periods - pre-liberalisation period (1970-71 to 1995-96) which is referred as period I and post-liberalisation (1996-97 to 2019-20) which is referred as period II. Models considered in the analysis are linear model, logarithmic model, quadratic model, compound model and power model. Durbin-Watson test, Shapiro-wilk’s test and park’s test are used for testing error assumption. By testing the significance of parametric coefficient, residual diagnostics and the model fit statistics, the best fit model for the variable have been selected. Using the best fit model, the growth rate of area, productivity and production of groundnut in Odisha has been estimated. The measure of instability of area, productivity and production of groundnut is given by Coefficient of Variation.

The study reveals that different models have been found to be the best fit for different variables in different periods. The study of growth rate using the best fit model reveals that area and production of groundnut decrease in post-liberalisation period than pre-liberalisation period. The growth rate of productivity of groundnut increases in post-liberalisation period as compared to pre-liberalisation period. The situation is reverse with respect to instability. The study comes with the conclusion that as compared to pre-liberalisation period, the productivity performance of groundnut in Odisha has enhanced in post-liberalisation period. The poor performance in area under groundnut results in poor performance in production of groundnut during post-liberalisation period as compared to pre-liberalisation period. The appropriate model building technique helps in depicting a proper scenario of groundnut production in the state of Odisha.