"Financing Agriculture", as readers are aware, is one of the oldest journal on the subject. Many of the senior officers in the banking industry, today, have grown up by referring to Financing Agriculture. It was envisaged that Financing Agriculture will be a platform for exchanging experiences among the bankers in the area of financing agriculture and priority sector. However, over a period of time, the journal slightly drifted to became broadly a platform for exchanging ideas and innovation being undertaken by scientists.

With the consistent growth of more than 8 per cent in the Indian Economy, agriculture is making its contribution to the economic growth of the nation and many positive developments are taking place in spite of the difficulties, which are obvious in such a vast and diverse country as ours. While banking system is experimenting with innovative credit delivery mechanism, microfinance institutions are developing new models for providing both financial and non-financial services to the people, who have been by-passed by the institutional system in rural areas. The urban poor, to a large extent, not getting the benefit of such innovation. Similarly, entrepreneurs and technical experts are making great contribution to commercial agriculture and horticulture. Amendments to APMC Act and advent of contract farming has increased interest of corporate sector in agriculture.

Keeping in trend with the developments, the Financing Agriculture is also being repositioned to be a more relevant journal to the practitioners and policy makers in the area of agricultural credit and rural development in its full manifestation. Accordingly, periodicity of the journal is being increased from quarterly to bi-monthly and subsequently to monthly, so that our readers are updated on regular basis. The Editorial Board has been reconstituted with the practitioners and contents have been diversified covering major aspects of the agriculture and rural development.

I hope the changes will be useful and provide value to the readers.

A K Garg    
Managing Director     

EDITORIAL