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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

The Problem in Dals
-Economic and Political Weekly

Why has pulse production stagnated despite measures to boost production being well known?

This season, the prices of pulses (dals) have been on fire. According to the Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India, the average retail price of red gram (tuar) doubled from around Rs 80 a kg in March 2015 to Rs 150–Rs 160 a kg in November 2015. What could this price rise be due to? Obviously, there has been a persistent demand–supply gap in the case of pulses in India. Projections of future demand for pulses by the Twelfth Five Year Plan put demand at 25 million tonnes in 2020–21, whereas India’s production in 2013–14 was around 19 million tonnes. So, production has to grow by at least 3.5% per annum to close the gap by 2020–21. The past record does not offer much reason for hope. Between 1996–97 and 2013–14, total production of pulses grew at an annual rate of just 1.83%. Growth has mainly been in rabi pulses like Bengal gram (chana), while kharif pulses like red gram, produced largely under rain-fed conditions, were growing at a rate of less than 1% only during the same period. More importantly, the per hectare yield of pulses recorded a growth rate of only 1.14% per annum over this 17-year period. To meet the future demand for pulses, the yield growth required would be at least twice this figure. Hence, there is an urgent need for a breakthrough in the production of pulses in India.

While the current price rise is somewhat unprecedented, prices of pulses have been on a rising curve for a long time. Between January 2005 and October 2015, the price index of pulses moved up by nearly 270 points. The “real price” of pulses, expressed as the ratio of the price index of pulses to the price index of all commodities, nearly doubled during this period. The government has been resorting to large-scale imports for the last several years, equivalent to 15%–20% of domestic production, to control price rise. The fact that price rise of this sort has not induced a significant area shift in favour of pulses perhaps shows the limits of price incentives in influencing cropping decisions.

An interesting aspect is the spatial concentration of pulse production. Most agricultural crops are grown in specific agro-ecological zones. While pulses are grown in over 400 districts in India, 80% of the production is accounted for by less than 20% of these districts. These pulse-growing districts are mostly in the contiguous rain-fed tracts of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana, North Karnataka and Gujarat. This has the significant implication that almost all of India’s production of pulses is in one basket. The impact of extreme climate events (drought or flood) could affect production in a major way. This also means that India needs to devise strategies for diversification of pulse production to new areas.

So what needs to be done and what can be done? First, the government needs to take urgent measures to initiate procurement of pulses at scale. This would translate the promised minimum support prices (MSPs) of pulses into an actuality in farmers’ lives. As it is well known, since there has been no public procurement of pulses, MSPs have largely remained outside the imagination of pulse growers, especially in rain-fed areas. Procurement at MSP would encourage pulse production in new areas. With this, the government could create a buffer stock of 2–3 million tonnes to control a rise in prices. Second, there are significant productivity differentials between India and other pulse-producing nations like Myanmar and this yield gap needs to be closed. Greater emphasis needs to be given to pulses in our public-funded agricultural research and extension system. There are a number of pulse varieties with good yield potential that are available and their promotion would also ensure seed security at the household level. Third, there is a pressing need to diversify and expand the area under pulse production to new states and regions. Such an expansion could be in the vast single-cropped rain-fed areas of Eastern India as well as in parts of Punjab and North Rajasthan, which have overexploited their underlying aquifers and hence require cropping systems and crop rotations to regulate groundwater overuse. If the existing laws regulating early (before 10 May 2016) transplantation of paddy in Punjab are implemented, pulses can come in as an alternative crop option that can be encouraged. Fourth, we need to promote new forms of farmer collectives like the Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), which enable small and marginal farmers to come together and collectively take control over a greater part of the value chain in commodity markets. Lastly, we must realise that the current status of pulses is a consequence of the long-standing policy neglect of rain-fed agriculture.

What is needed to boost production of pulses has been known at least since the 1980s and various technology missions were created specifically for the purpose of enhancing pulse production. Yet, production has stagnated or at best risen very slowly. Corrective action, in the shape of greater public investment in rain-fed agriculture, in protective irrigation, soil improvement, pest management and post-harvest techno­logies, needs to be taken up at the earliest. This is perhaps the only long-term solution to ending the long-standing supply–demand gap in pulses.