Vital Statistics

1. Average size of holdings in T N – 0.83 ha (2005-06)

2. Average rice area in T N - 19.0 lakh ha & production is 70 lakh tonnes
3. Average millets area in millets – 7.0 lakh ha & production is 15. 0 lakh tonnes
4. Area under cotton is 1.09 lakh ha oilseeds area is 5.56 lakh ha
5. Area under coconut is 4.0 lakh ha and prodn is 55 lakh nuts
6. CPIS – Coconut palm insurance scheme
7. Protein content – millets 10.6g/kg, rice 6.8 g/kg
8. The colour for farmer members under C M farmers security scheme is Maroon
9. Extent of degraded lands in TN is 22.5 lakh ha
10. Organic content of TN soils is approx 0.70 %
11. TN has 179 uzhavar sandhai and 277 regulated markets, commodity arrival – 17 lakh tones
12. Pledge loans – upto 75 % (SF &MF) and 50% for others farmers of value of farm produce and
Rs.2 lakh for 6 months and for traders it is 50% of value and for 3 months at 9 % interest.
13. 1650 commodity groups are formed in T N
14. Storage capacity of godowns in TN is around 40 lakh tones
15. Agro Export Zone – Cutflower – Hosur, Cashew – Panruti, flowers – Ooty, Mango – Nilakottai
16. RBHs – Rural Business Hubs
17. HACCP – Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point

World Trade Organization

Amber Box
All domestic supports that distort production and trade e.g. measures to price support and subsidies
directly related to production. Prime motive is to reduce distortion.
Blue Box

Any support that would normally be in the amber box, is placed in the blue box if the support also
requires farmers to limit production (details set out in Paragraph 5 of Article 6 of the Agriculture
Agreement). At present there are no limits on spending on blue box subsidies. In the current
negotiations, some countries want to keep the blue box as it is because they see it as a crucial means of
moving away from distorting amber box subsidies without causing too much hardship.
Green box 
The green box is defined in Annex 2 of the Agriculture Agreement.
In order to qualify, green box subsidies must not distort trade, or at most cause minimal distortion. They
have to be government-funded (not by charging consumers higher prices) and must not involve price
support. They tend to be programmes that are not targeted at particular products, and include direct
income supports for farmers that are not related to (are “decoupled” from) current production levels or
prices. They also include environmental protection and regional development programmes. “Green box”
subsidies are therefore allowed without limits, provided they comply with the policy-specific criteria set
out in Annex 2.
 de minimis
Minimal amounts of domestic support that are allowed even though they distort trade — up to 5% of the
value of production for developed countries, 10% for developing.

AMS - Aggregate Measure of Support

AoA - Agreement on Agriculture
GATT - General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
MFN - Multi Fibre Arrangement
NAMA - Non Agriculture market Access
QR - Quantitative Restrictions
SPS - Sanitary and Phyto Sanitary measures
TBT - Technical Barriers to Trade
UPOV - International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants
TRIPS - Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
TRIMs - Trade Related Investment Measures
WIPO - World Intellectual Property Organization
Shadow Price – Marginal Value productivity of inputs

Production Possibility Curve - is a graph that compares the production rates of two commodities that
use the same fixed total of the factors of production. A PPF shows all possible combinations of two
goods that can be produced simultaneously during a given period of time.

Expansion path - expansion path (also called a scale line) is a line connecting optimal input
combinations as the scale of production expands. A producer seeking to produce the most units of a
product in the cheapest possible way attempts to increase production along the expansion path.

Marginal Rate of Transformation - The slope of the production–possibility frontier (PPF) at any given
point is called the marginal rate of transformation (MRT). The slope defines the rate at which production
of one good can be redirected (by re-allocation of production resources) into production of the other. It
is also called the (marginal) "opportunity cost" of a commodity.

Price Elasticity - Price elasticity of demand (PED or Ed) is a measure used in economics to show the
responsiveness, or elasticity, of the quantity demanded of a good or service to a change in its price.
More precisely, it gives the percentage change in quantity demanded in response to a one percent
change in price (holding constant all the other determinants of demand, such as income). It was devised
by Alfred Marshall.

Law of equimarginal returns - The law of Equi-marginal returns is concerned with the allocation of the
limited amount of resource among different enterprises. The law states that “profits are maximized by
using a resource in such a way that the marginal returns from that resource are equal in all cases”