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Diversify crops, shift rice to places that can support it: Central panel

  • Published
    10th Jun, 2022
Context

The Commission for Agricultural Cost and Prices (CACP) has recommended promotion of crop diversification, favouring oilseed crops amid the global inflation in oilseeds and vegetable oils prices.

About

Key takeaways from CACP report:

  • Growing rice and wheat in agro-climatically unsuitable regions:
  • Assured procurement and minimum support prices (MSP) in the rice-wheat cropping pattern has resulted in rising share of paddy and wheat in total cropped area in some states, especially Punjab and Haryana, while the shares of oilseeds, pulses, maize and bajra have declined.
  • Other states growing crops in unsuitable regions include urad in Chhattisgarh, sesamum in Karnataka, paddy in Maharashtra and jowar in Telangana.
  • Share of different crops during 1980-81 and 2019-20:

Crop

1980-81

2019-20

Paddy

17.5%

40.1%

Maize

5.6%

1.4%

Bajra

1%

0.3%

Pulses

5%

0.5%

Oilseeds

3.7%

0.6%

  • Global inflation creates a structural risk as vegetable oils account for about half of India’s agricultural import, subsequently raising the country’s agri-import bill.

Reasons of why states do not opt for diversification of crops:

  • low returns and high risks from alternative crops,
  • lack of assured marketing and remunerative prices, and
  • non availability of appropriate proven technology for alternative crops

Suggestions:

States

The crops they can diversify into from paddy farming

Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand

Maize

Bihar

Maize, moong, and sunflower

Gujarat

Bajra

Maharashtra

jowar, bajra, maize, ragi, tur, moong, urad, groundnut, soybean and cotton 

Rajasthan

Groundnut and cotton

Tamil Nadu

Seasamum

Uttar Pradesh

Bajra, maize, tur and groundnut 

West Bengal

Moong

  • Appropriate policy measures should be initiated to promote paddy cultivation in suitable areas and reduce area under paddy in Haryana, Punjab, and western Uttar Pradesh.
  • To solve the issue of misalignment of cropping patterns with hydrological suitability, the CACP has recommended moving from the approach of heavily subsidising inputs to a direct transfer approach of directly giving money into the accounts of the farmers. 
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