Patterns, Sources and Determinants of Agricultural Growth in India

The study using published data on area, production, productivity and value of crop output for 21 crops and standard decomposition methodologies estimates, inter alia, sources of growth in Indian agriculture at the all-India level and across seventeen major states during each of the five decades since the beginning of the seventies. The study shows that increase in yield followed by an increase in the real price and crop diversification account for more than ninety per cent of the addition to the value of crop output. The evidence on crop diversification and change in income from cultivation across most of the states suggests that farmers tend to adopt a combination of fewer but high income yielding crops to maximize their income. The results of the study unequivocally show that technology in terms of availability of high yielding disease resistant and climate change resilient short duration varieties of different crops including fruits and vegetables which manifests in high yields holds the key for fostering, accelerating and sustaining crop diversification and agricultural growth. The policy implication is to considerably enhance R & D expenditure on agriculture which continues to stagnate at around 0.60-0.70 per cent of the gross domestic product and around 0.40-0.50 per cent of the gross domestic product originating in agriculture for the last more than two decades.