India’s agriculture production surges to 242 million in 2010-11

20 Jul 2011 Evaluate

The agriculture production of India showed record increase of around 11% during the 2010-11 agriculture season (July to June), the farm production increased from 218 million tonne in 2009-10 to 242 million in 2010-11. Foodgrains include, rice, wheat coarse cereals and pulses. In 2009-10 season, the farm production had reduced by almost 7% to 218 million tonne from 234 million tonne in 2008-09.

However, sustaining the record output may be difficult this year because of the poor rainfall in July may affect sowing and eventually the output. In Mid-July, India received 3% below the normal rainfall with 13 meteorological departments reporting deficit in rainfall.
 
The 11% growth in agriculture production is due to increase in production of wheat, coarse cereals, maize and pulses. The production of wheat was 86 million during 2010-11 from 81 million tonne in 2009-10, similarly, production of coarse cereals was 42.22 million tonnes, production of maize was 21.28 million tonnes, and production of pulses was 18.09 million tonne. Experts say that this record increase in farm production is due to central government’s policies. The production of wheat, coarse cereals, maize and pulses hit the all time high level.

Agriculture Secretary P K Basu said, 'We can easily produce 20 million tonnes of pulses by bringing follow land under cultivation and also through inter-cropping system...I do not think we have to import pulses after 3-4 years.' 

From the last few years government has increased the Minimum Support Prices for number of crops, which has allowed famers to apply more inputs to their crops, which resulted in increase in the overall production. Government had increased MSP for pulses up to Rs 700 per quintal. For some pulses the support price is increased by more than 20%.  The record increase in production of vegetable oilseeds also helped to reduce the import of vegetable oils about a million tonne. Last year country had imported around 9.2 million tonne of vegetable oils to meet the domestic demand.

Experts argue that government should allow exports of foodgains so that farmer gets the higher prices. Earlier in this month, government removed the ban from exports of non basmati rice and wheat. Country had the stock of 64 million tonne of food grain which is above the shortage capacity. However, the decision on removing ban from exports of food grains had hampered the possibility of making higher profits in international markets. 

Presently, India is in position to meet the domestic demand for the foodgrains, however, it has to increase the farm production to meet the future demand for foodgrains which is expected to be around 280 million tonne by 2020. The per capita consumption of cereals has declined; however, increase in population will require increase in production in absolute terms.

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