This book makes a bold attempt to answer the question: does agriculture in a market dominated business environment context as in Gujarat depend on Government sponsored efforts or does the individual networking and enterprise of the farmer count? The answer according to the author is that, for the Gujarati farmer the ‘trader’ is all important as a ‘source of information’ and as a buyer of his produce. Though Gujarat has a market based agriculture, incremental sale possibilities and factors like future trading are not very dominant. However, institutional credit sources like banks and cooperative societies are dominant. A regression study done by the author indicates that factors representing developed agriculture have a significant effect on the marketed surplus ratio. While the marketed surplus of farmers by size class depends on the size of the farm, per hectare surplus is not significantly different between small and large farmers but is lower for medium farms. Transport links and location of markets is also important.

In this book, Munish Alagh makes sincere efforts to estimate marketable and marketed surplus in selected food grains in Gujarat. These types of studies are very few in India. The analysis in this study would inspire many particularly young researchers.
— S. Mahendra Dev, Director and Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai.

The author deserves to be complimented for this pioneering and extensive study on a key problem in agriculture economics viz., the determinants of marketable and marketed supply of food grains. Using a detailed econometric model, the study presents a scientific analysis of these determinants in the case of Gujarat. The work, I am sure, would prove of considerable interest to academics and policymakers alike.
— Dilip M. Nachane, Chancellor, University of Manipur; formerly Member, PM’s Economic Advisory Council and Director, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research.

This is a valuable contribution to the empirical literature on the factors promoting and impeding the development of commercial agriculture in India. Based on a survey in Gujarat, the results show the impact of the expansion of irrigation and investment in modern technologies, especially by larger farmers, and the need for stronger market institutions.
— Gerry Rodgers, former Director, International Institute for Labour Studies at the ILO.

Munish Alagh is Senior Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) at the Sardar Patel Institute of Economic and Social Research (SPIESR) in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He has authored more than 10 publications in reputed journals of Economics. He has authored two books on agricultural economics and entrepreneurship, respectively in 2011 and 2015. He has held teaching positions in different institutions in Ahmedabad from 1999 to 2010. He was awarded the Chimanbhai Patel Award for the Best Research Paper among teachers of the Gujarat University in 2004. Dr Alagh holds a doctoral degree from Mumbai University (2007).