Falling Crop Yields Point Towards A Crisis In Agriculture

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New Delhi: Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has drawn repeated attention to the fact that while India is the second largest producer of most of the principal crops, it has the lowest yields per hectare in the world. India’s paddy yields of 2.9 tonnes per hectare thus contrast poorly with the US’ yields of 6.2 tonnes per hectare. Even in an emerging market context, our yields of wheat (2.5 tonnes) are lower than China’s 3.9 tonnes per hectare.

Not only are India’s yields the lowest, they are also declining sharply in recent years — clearly pointing to the depth of the agrarian crisis in India.

Mr Pawar, no doubt, has a broader agenda of making the Indian farmer a global player but this cannot be achieved unless the country’s agrarian economy is put on a sounder footing.

In this context, a Lok Sabha unstarred question no 95 on the variation in yields has disturbing implications.

Wheat conjures up images of lush golden fields in the countryside of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. But the reality is that in all these states, per hectare yields have been declining in recent years. In Punjab, for instance, yields dropped from 4.6 tonnes per hectare in 2000-01 to 4.2 tonnes per hectare in 2002-03. These trends reflect the fact that the Green Revolution-associated productivity increases have long since plateaued off.

Disturbingly, this phenomenon is also observed for paddy yields across various states, especially south of the Vindhyas. The highest yields are in Tamil Nadu (5 tonnes per hectare) followed by Andhra (3.9 tonnes), Kerala (3.3 tonnes) and Karnataka (2.9 tonnes) in 2002-03. This particular year coincided with the worst drought in recent memory, but it is worth noting that (barring Kerala) yields have fallen in all of them since 2000-01.

As for pulses and edible oils, the outlook is in any case dismal as demand-supply imbalances have necessitated large scale imports. But even if the focus moves away from foodgrain to commercial crops, the pattern of yield decline is across-the-board. Take cotton in a state like Andhra in which 3,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1997. Yields have plunged since 2000-01. Even in Punjab, they are lower in 2002-03 than in 2000-01.

Sugarcane too exemplifies the ‘yield decline’ phenomenon.

But in this case a caveat is in order as there are four to five year cycles in production.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that another state which experienced the highest suicides — Karnataka — experienced severe drought conditions in both 2002-03 and 2003-04 reflected in a steep fall in sugarcane yields. Even the premier cane producing region in the country, Uttar Pradesh, experienced a drop in yields.

The Pawar agenda of making the farmer a global player is, no doubt, a paradigm shift in thinking about Indian agriculture. But before benchmarking our yields with the rest of the world, there is a warrant for checking the fall in the rockbottom yields of our principal crops.

Govt To Monitor Crop Area And Production From Space
Our Bureau
The central government is planning to introduce a “Crop Acreage and Production Estimation (CAPE)” scheme aimed at developing and upgrading the methodology of area and pre-harvest production assessment of crops using remote sensing technology. This scheme is being implemented in collaboration with the department of space.

Union minister of state Kanti Lal Bhuria, while replying to a question by Ajay Maken in Parliament said that the government proposes to establish a mechanism for obtaining timely and reliable advance estimates of area and production for which “it has been decided to implement a project called Forecasting Agricultural Output Using Space, Agro-meteorology and Land-based observations (FASAL), as an umbrella scheme”.

According to the proposal, implementation of FASAL project is envisaged in phases over the remaining period of Tenth Five Year Plan and the Eleventh Plan.

The minister said that the “FASAL project has been conceived after gaining experience in the use of remote sensing technique for estimating area and production for specified crops (covered under CAPE)”. In addition, he said that it aims at integrating agro-meteorology, land and space borne measurements, using the principles of econometrics, to make early and in-season multiple forecasts of area and production of major crops.

The minister also stated that the department of agriculture and cooperation was in the process of institutionalising a mechanism for FASAL implementation around its National Crop Forecasting Centre (NCFC) along with the Department of Space (DOS), India Meteorological Department (IMD), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the State Remote Sensing Centres, Agricultural Departments and State Agricultural Statistics Authority (SASA).