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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Foodgrain output in India seems stagnant for 10 years by Jayashree Bhosale

Foodgrain output in India seems stagnant for 10 years by Jayashree Bhosale

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published Published on Jun 23, 2010   modified Modified on Jun 23, 2010

An analysis of the remote sensing data collected by Nasa satellites on the changes in vegetation in India during the last 25 years has confirmed the bad news: The growth rate of foodgrain production in India has been stagnant in the last decade, which crop statisticians have been aware of for some time now.

A nine-member team of scientists from Nasa, the Boston University and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, analysed the satellite remote sensing data from 1982-2006.

The IITM conducted an independent study two months ago about the increase in night-time temperature in the country during the last decade and its impact on rice yields. This study is based on changes in vegetation greenness measured using satellite data.

The study found that the growth rate in annually integrated vegetation greenness, a measure of crop growth, has declined significantly in 23% of the water-limited tropic (WLT) cropland area during the last decade.

MS Swaminathan, the architect of India’s green revolution, has called for efforts towards a second green revolution in eastern India to tide over this challenge to the country’s food security. “...We must step up our efforts to promote conservation- and climate-resilient farming in this area, and to derive benefit from the vast untapped production reservoir existing in eastern India,” said Dr Swaminathan in an e-mailed response to ET.

The study covered more than 40 developing countries in water-limited tropics, a region where 1.5 billion people live and depend on local agriculture that is constrained by chronic water shortages, with a focus on India.

“Our analysis shows that the recent stagnation in food production is corroborated by satellite data,” said K Krishna Kumar, senior scientist at IITM and member of the Nasa-funded research.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) data shows that the rate of foodgrain production has declined in 31 of the 40 countries between 1996 and 2006. Recent declining growth rates are seen in the main foodgrain producing states in the Indo-Gangetic Plain and in the central portion of the country (Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka to Andhra Pradesh).

“In India, the main increases in foodgrain production during the past four decades have been realised during the rabi season. Rabi season crops have gone from contributing a third of the food grain production in the mid 1960s to today’s capacity to produce as much as the kharif season on one-third less cropped area,” says the paper published in online journal Remote Sensing in March 2010.

The study expresses fear that the groundwater-based expansion of grain production in India may have reached its limit and a further overexploitation of the aquifers may lead farmers to revert to low productivity crops.


The Economic Times, 23 June, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/agriculture/Foodgrain-output-in-India-seems-stagnant-for-10-years/articleshow/6080290.cms


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