Creating an Optimal Portfolio of Crops Using Price Forecasting to Increase ROI for Indian Farmers

Abstract

The Indian agricultural sector being in a constant phase of upgradation, has been on the road to modernization for the last couple of years. The fundamental source of livelihood for over 70 percent of the population living in rural parts of the country is still agriculture. The average Indian farmer, although has access to raw and trend data pertaining to crop prices, yield and demand from Indian government and private websites, still struggles to make the right choices. They are constantly faced with the dilemma of choosing the right crop to address market demand and fetch them a decent profit. Since the process of shortlisting crops amongst the many suitable ones isn't completely scientific and usually dictated by area tradition, this project has aimed to address that issue by forecasting the price of those crops and uses that to create an optimal portfolio that the farmers can obtain to arrive at a data-driven decision for crop selection with optimal estimated ROI.