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

Abstract

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 Despite these benefits, ragi has largely been replaced by subsidized green revolution grains.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.