Page 155 - DECO502_INDIAN_ECONOMIC_POLICY_ENGLISH

Unit 13: Recent Issues in Indian Agriculture
Dilfraz Singh, Lovely Professional University

Unit 13: Recent Issues in Indian Agriculture Notes

CONTENTS
Objective
Introduction
13.1 Recent Issues in Indian Agriculture
13.2 Agricultural Challenges in India
13.3 Opportunities in the Challenges
13.4 Summary
13.5 Key-Words
13.6 Review Questions
13.7 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Describe the Recent Issues in Indian Agriculture.
• Understand Agricultural challenges in India.
• Discuss the opportunities in the challenges.
Introduction

The contribution of rapid growth in productivity in ensuring a sustained growth of production is
important as has been discussed in previous chapter. Here, the discussion would be on the issues and
concerns relating not only to sustained growth of production but also those relating to an institutional
and organisational support system. This support system helps in generating impulses of sustained
agricultural growth and in weeding out forces that tend to inhibit such growth. The knowledge of
the issues and concerns will enable us to clearly understand their significance in relation to the
agricultural sector. Their impact would also be our focus and we would draw inferences related to
the desirable nature and extent of change for the benefit of the sector. The following issues and
concerns will be discussed in this chapter : shrinking land base and declining access to land; irrigation
system, credit system, availability of inputs like festilisers, seeds and pesticides; prices, costs and
profitability; marketing system; agreement onagriculture under WTO; and investment in agriculture.
13.1 Recent Issues in Indian Agriculture

“Agriculture development is central to our growth strategy. Measures taken during the current year have
started attracting private investment in agriculture and agro-processing activities. This process has to be deepened
further.”
With nearly 12 percent of the world’s arable land, India is the world’s third-largest producer of food
grains, the second-largest producer of fruits and vegetables and the largest producer of milk; it also
has the largest number of livestock. Add to that a range of agro climatic regions and agri-produce,
extremely industrious farmers, a country that is fundamentally strong in science and technology, a
government committed to Indian agriculture and an economy that is on the verge of double-digit
growth, and you should have the makings of a bumper harvest.
Yet the comprehensive outlook for Indian agriculture is far more complex than those statistics might
suggest. The sector supports an estimated 70 percent of the Indian population, but is also the most
sluggish, having just extricated itself from a period of negative growth - of -0.1 percent in 2008-2009-to

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 149