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Agricultural Oddities PDF
Agricultural Oddities PDF
Agricultural Oddities
T C A Ranganathan
16
vol l no 21
EPW
COMMENTARY
Land Productivity
While commentators mainly take note
of the insufficient increase in agricultural productivity, the gap between Indian
and world productivity is also striking,
as Table 2 shows.
The numbers need to be further broken down by specific types of cereals,
particularly because corn, included in
The above figures are a cause for concern as land, undoubtedly, is a scarce resource, and we should aim to use it efficientlyand worry when it is not. But, it
is also important to understand that land
is not the only scarce resource.
199697
615
199798
609
199899
649
19992000 667
200001 <649
200102
663
200203
608
200304
607
200405
613
200506
685
200607
773
200708
804
200809
746
200910
742
201011
842
201112
885
201213 (P) 874
CAGR (%)
2.22
Countries
China
933
United States 915
India
297
World
13,003
110
163
158
1,381
12
18
53
11
483
420
249
2,494
Fertiliser Usage
Table 4 indicates that production growth
was lower than fertiliser use. This fall in
efficiency is, however, best understood if
an inter-temporal and cross-country
comparison is done. We do recognise
that fertiliser use depends on crop profiles and land conditions and also understand that the use of fertiliser per acre of
land in India is the highest in the world.
However, inter-temporal increase in useintensity has a significant bearing on
the above composition, is not an important cereal in India, though it is in several other countries. A case study of rice
may be more illuminating, and was
reported in the Exim Bank Studies. The
brief details are shown in Table 3.
Agricultural productivity in
Table 3: Indias Agricultural Productivity Compared with
India is seen as significantly Other Countries
Production % Share in
Area
% Share in
Yield
lower compared to our neigh- Countries
(million
World
Harvested World Area (kg/ha)
bours. A state-wise comparison
tonnes)
Production (million ha)
in the Exim Bank Studies indi- China
196.7
28.7
29.9
18.9
6,582
cated that only Punjab was Japan
10.6
1.5
1.6
1.0
6,521
12.7
1.9
2.9
1.8
4,405
close to Bangladesh in produc- Brazil
7.0
11.4
7.2
4,203
tivity levels. West Bengal, Bangladesh 47.7
32.7
4.8
8
5.1
4,085
though proximate to Bangla- Myanmar
10.3
1.5
2.9
1.8
3,581
desh and with similar agro-cli- Pakistan
99
14.5
41.9
26.5
2,178
matic conditions, had produc- India*
World (total) 684.8
100.0
158.4
100.0
4,324
tivity levels just two-thirds that Source: FAOSTAT; Agriculture Statistics200809, Department of
Agriculture and Cooperation, GoI.
of Bangladesh.
Economic & Political Weekly
EPW
vol l no 21
Agricultural
Production
(million
tonnes)
Total
NPK
Agricultural
(lakh
Credit
tonnes)
(Rs bn)
Net
Irrigated
Area
(000 ha)
14
16
17
18
17
17
16
17
18
20
22
23
25
26
28
28
26
3.69
55,112
55,210
57,436
57,531
55,205
56,936
53,897
57,058
59,230
60,838
62,745
63,190
63,639
61,939
63,601
314
349
396
444
519
608
735
905
1,253
1,740
2,304
2,753
3,387
4,161
4,806
5,484
5,899
20.12
1.03
Table 5 (p 18) shows that several countries have secured absolute reductions in
fertiliser use. The United States (US) uses
less fertiliser than India. Also, while intensity of fertiliser use is higher in China, the
rate of growth of fertiliser intensity has
slowed. On the contrary, India still shows a
high rate of increase, despite modest production growth.
Water Use
While on a purely temporal basis, the
compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
irrigated area is only 1.03% (Table 4),
and thus seems to be moving in tandem
with productivity growth, this should be
read against the fact that India has the
highest area under irrigation in the
world and one of the highest intensities
of water use in the world. Further, the
comparision with the US and China is
seen in Table 6 (p 18).
An inter-temporal comparison of water use to evaluate water efficiency is
somewhat difficult as not all countries
report data on similar timelines, but the
available data is in itself interesting. Table
7 (p 18) depicts that water consumption in
India has gone up in the past two decades, while other countries secured significant reductions in water usage.
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COMMENTARY
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vol l no 21
EPW
COMMENTARY
EPW
vol l no 21
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