Agricultural Production and Trade Policy and Future Directions

摘要

India's performance in the agricultural sector both in terms of production and exports since 2004 is spectacular in many respects, despite the problems of labour shortages, decline in the share of labour force working in the sector. The paper assessedthe agricultural production export performance by using the information from Ministry of Agriculture and Directorate of Foreign Trade. Given agricultural sector significantly influenced by the vagaries of the monsoon, average triennium of TE 2004 and TE2014 compared. Overall, agricultural and allied sector GDP growth was 3.2 % between 2004 and 2014, which is quite good compared to earlier period. The food grain production increased from 200 to 260 million tonnes during TE 2004 to TE 2014 indicating CGR of 2.6% per annum. Especially growth rate in pulses and oilseeds are much higher at 3.4% and 4.4% per annum. The main driving force of the growth of the pulses and oilseeds may be the policy initiatives of steep increase in MSP for pulses and oilseedscompared to other crops. Another booster for agricultural growth is cotton, which is mainly driven by the Bt cotton technology and it revolutionised the agriculture in some drought prone and unirrigated areas. The high value crops, milk, meat, egg and fish all showed significantly higher growth rates mainly due to the rising demand and favourable Govt, policies.In the past three years, the performance of agricultural exports is spectacular with share in total exports from 10.5% in 2010-11 to 13.5% in 2012-13. India's export basket is highly diverse with guar gum meal, cotton raw, basmati rice, marine products,meat and products, oil meals, spices and rice (other than basmati). The share of agricultural imports in India's total imports is much smaller at 3.8% of which only edible oils contribute about 60 % and pulses contributes 13%. As the production of chemical fertilizers in India is almost stagnant from 2001 onwards, hence fertilizers imported in large quantities i.e. 24.1 million tonnes by spending ? 47694 crores of foreign exchange in the year 2012-13.In policy front, the increase in MSP for the pulses and oilseeds helped to some extent to increase inproduction, but the gap between demand and supply of both the commodities is still at large. There is better performance of horticulture crops, first time the production of horticulture crops surpassed food grain production in India. However, India needsto increase its food safety standards and market infrastructure to meet both domestic and international demand. However, on the negative side there is stagnation in the production of chemical fertilizers and increase in imports, which is a burden on theforeign exchange. The agricultural exports in the non-traditional commodities like cotton, guar gum and other processed products is increasing, but India is lacking in the necessary processing infrastructure for produce of these crops.