Principal Scientist
Shalander Kumar, Principal Scientist, Innovation Systems for the Drylands, at ICRISAT-Hyderabad, has carried out extensive research for more than two decades in the field of economics of rainfed farming systems, whole farm modeling to support decision making at household and regional levels, and ex-ante & trade-off analysis to assess the impact of climate smart interventions. Other areas of active intervention include: livestock production and marketing systems, farm-level rainwater harvesting, potential for conservation agriculture, climate change impacts and extension systems in India and Africa. As a systems scientist he has contributed to promoting integrated systems approaches (AR4D), farm typology building approaches, ex-ante analysis & innovation systems approaches for co-designing resilient farming systems in dry areas. Further work was on assessing climate change impacts and building scaling up strategies for climate smart agriculture, institutional options for management of agriculture and common property resources, innovation platforms as instruments for enhancing technology adoption, and strengthening agricultural value chains.
He successfully led a trans-disciplinary team in the design and implementation of a mega climate adaptation program, ‘National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture’ across 100 districts of India. His work on Innovation and Learning Platforms has led to the formation of the National Goat and Sheep Farmers Association of India; and the medicinal plants value chain involving >500 farmers linked to industry in western Rajasthan. At ICRISAT, he led the South Asia interdisciplinary team of the CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Systems as South Asia Flagship Coordinator.
He has wide experience of working in India, Ethiopia, Myanmar and The Netherlands. In 2009, he received ICAR’s national award as Best Extension Expert; and in 2015 he was awarded with the Outstanding Partnership Award-Asia by ICRISAT. He has published widely with more than 45 journal articles, has an h-index of 10, and more than 300 citations.
Expertise in: Agricultural economics, farming systems analysis, whole farm modelling and tradeoff analysis, climate change impact and risk management strategies, innovation systems approach for co-designing sustainable intesification of farming systems
Publications
Google Scholar
Research Gate
- Investment planning to minimize climate risk in agricultural production: an optimization model for a semi-arid region in India
on September 15, 2022 at 9:34 am
- Grain legumes and dryland cereals for enhancing carbon sequestration in semi-arid and sub-humid agro-ecologies of Africa and South Asia
on April 21, 2022 at 5:28 am
- Quantifying Farm Household Resilience and the Implications of Livelihood Heterogeneity in the Semi-Arid Tropics of India
on March 28, 2022 at 11:10 am
- Determinants of Consumer’s Willingness to Pay towards Organic Products: A Structural Equation Modelling Approach
on February 8, 2022 at 8:32 am
- Technology, infrastructure and enterprise trade-off: Strengthening smallholder farming systems in Tamil Nadu State of India for sustainable income and food security
on February 8, 2022 at 8:00 am
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shalander_Kumar2 (Total reads > 14000)