Growth and instability in agriculture - A case of pulses production in India

Pulses are an important commodity group of crops that provide high quality protein complementing cereal proteins for pre-dominantly substantial vegetarian population of the country. In India, pulses can be produced with a minimum use of resources and hence, it becomes less costly even than animal protein. Although this crop group is more important from the nutritional point of view, there has not been any significant development both in area and production during the last 50 years. In recent years, commercial and major millets are replacing the area under pulses and has led to several issues requiring attention of all the concerned. The study is based on time-series data for 60 years (1950-51 to 2009-10) on area, production and productivity of pulses in India. Exponential growth rate, instability index and Hazel’s decomposition analysis was used and it was found that, the growth rate of area under pulses during the study period was non-significant, while production growth rate was just 0.59. The variation around the trend (instability index 10.56) and the variation around mean (CV 14.45 %) was more in case of production. Increase in mean yield accounted for 99 per cent of the increase in production. Variance in production of pulses was mainly due to residual factors.