Andhra Pradesh was the first State to be studied as part of the Project on Agrarian Relations in India. Census-type surveys were conducted in December 2005 in three villages:

• Ananthavaram, Guntur district
• Bukkacherla, Anantapur district
• Kothapalle, Karimnagar district (now in Telangana)

The results from the surveys of the three villages have been published as Socio-Economic Surveys of Three Villages in Andhra Pradesh: A Study of Agrarian Relations by Tulika Books, New Delhi in 2010.

A Consultation was held in Hyderabad on March 15 and 16, 2006, to present preliminary results from the surveys and from a first analysis of secondary economic data on rural Andhra Pradesh. Sample surveys were conducted in each village in June-July 2006. The main objective of the sample surveys was to study employment and income patterns among households. Preliminary results from this round of surveys were presented at a meeting in Hyderabad in December 2007.

Ananthavaram is a village in the rice-dominated tracts of south coastal Andhra. Within the south coastal region as a whole, there are also areas where a substantial share of total income is generated by coconut (particularly in Krishna district) and the cultivation of fish and prawn (particularly in West Godavari district). We decided to re-survey Ananthavaram, a village that was surveyed by P. Sundarayya in 1974. Ananthavaram is in Kollur Mandal, Guntur district, and is about 17 km from Tenali. It is part of the Krishna delta irrigation system, a rice-dominated village with some sugarcane and some maize, and sorghum and turmeric production in the rabi season.

Bukkacherla, which is in Raptadu Mandal, Anantapur district, is a village from a dry, drought-prone area. The proportion of net sown area irrigated in the village was, by census records, 10 percent, and the proportion of groundwater-irrigated land to total irrigated land was 82 percent. Groundnut was the main kharif crop. Rice was grown in the command area of the big tank, and specialised irrigated crops, including fruit crops, were grown on groundwater-irrigated plots.

Kothapalle is a village representing agriculture where irrigation is from bore-wells and food grain and other crops are grown. The districts most typical of such agriculture are Karimnagar and Nizamabad; the village that was studied was Kothapalle in Thimmapur Mandal, Karimnagar district. The proportion of net sown area irrigated in the village was, by Census records, 71 percent, and the proportion of groundwater-irrigated land to total irrigated land was 100 percent. The main crops were maize, rice and pulses.