Labour and capital productivity under shifting cultivation: A case study of Siang regions of Arunachal Pradesh.

A study on shifting cultivation in a state heavily reliant on agriculture found that over 80% of current production is organic, indicating a strong potential for a full transition, despite currently low productivity due to unsuitable conventional inputs for the region's challenging terrain and climate. The study defined labour productivity as output per unit of labour and capital productivity based on output yield relative to the cost of capital, identifying village and district variations in both measures linked to factors like household size, workforce, cultivation days, yield, and capital availability. Two regression models examined productivity in shifting cultivation. The first model, explaining 94.3% of variance in output per unit of labour, found positive correlations with area under cultivation , percentage of workers in self-cultivation , and output per unit of capital, suggesting labour and capital complementarity. Negative correlations were found with average person-days, percentage of labour in shifting cultivation and average household size, indicating that increased labour engagement on a fixed plot size can reduce productivity. The second model, explaining 94.9% of variance in output per unit of capital, showed positive relationships with average person-days, average household size, average age of household head, and labour productivity, again supporting labour-capital complementarity. A negative relationship was observed with the percentage of workers in self-cultivation, potentially due to higher capital productivity in alternative activities.