THE age-old practice of maintaining crop diversity went through a radical shift during the Green Revolution. Thousands of hectares of land that followed traditional crop diversity and supported soil nourishing legumes were put under monocultures of wheat and paddy. Despite the harsh criticism, mainly on environmental grounds, the mono-cropping pursued under the banner of the Green Revolution has two strong political considerations. It is sponsored by the state where government support and interventions in agricultural production – from generation and transfer of technology, to subsidies to inputs and output – are significant. And second, mono-cropping has contributed enormously to an increase in the production of the two major staple food grains, wheat and rice and thus has helped to achieve much needed self-sufficiency in food production in India.

For instance, the area share of rice and wheat, the two most important staple crops with a tremendous impact on food security, has increased steadily after embracing the Green Revolution. The noteworthy feature is the great leap in the productivity of these two staple crops especially during the ’80s in India. Between 1960 and 1990, the yield of rice has increased by around 72% and that of wheat by around 170%. As a result, production of these two crops together has increased from a meagre 45 million tones in 1960 to more than 150 million tones in recent years, justifying the policies and programmes to strengthen rice and wheat-based mono-cropping in areas endowed with fertile soil and assured irrigation. However, while mono-cropping did help the country achieve food self-sufficiency, it simultaneously had an adverse and far-reaching impact on the ground in terms of soil productivity and environmental sustainability of agricultural systems.

 

Technically, in the agronomic context, crop diversification involves growing more than one crop across time and/or space. Instead of growing a single crop (i.e. mono-cropping), when many crops, including a leguminous one, are grown (mixed cropping) we have crop diversification across space. Similarly, instead of growing the same crop year after year, if crops are rotated, that also qualifies as diversification across time. These space and time dimensions have their own implications for the sustainability of the agricultural production system.

Traditionally, farming communities have been following different modes of crop diversification best suited not only to their agro-ecological niches but also to satisfy their socio-cultural and culinary requirements. For example, the akadi system, a mixed line cropping comprising sorghum, pea, gram and oil seeds in ragi fileds in South Karnataka, ‘sarr and baranaja’ in Himalayan Garhwal where along with finger millet, barnyard millet and proso millet are also cultivated, the ‘saat dhan’ system in Rajasthan where the pearl millet based mixed cropping system predominates, ‘pannendu pantalu’ in the Zaheerabad region of Andhra Pradesh where sorghum is cultivated with several small millets, and ‘ragi pairu’ in Tamil Nadu where finger millet, along with a range of small millets, are traditionally cultivated. Not only is crop diversification environment friendly, it also helps control pests and diseases besides providing a much needed insurance against losses arising due to reduction in yield of any single crop.

 

Unfortunately, in recent times this agronomic definition of crop diversification as discussed above has been transformed with overriding commercial considerations where the emphasis is on a shift from traditionally grown and less remunerative food crops (cereals and pulses) to more remunerative commercial crops such as oil seeds, fruits, vegetables, cotton and flowers. A strongly held opinion in policy-making circles is to promote (in the aftermath of achieving food self-sufficiency) a price and market responsive, rather than government supported, agriculture.

The justifications offered to endorse this shift in the cropping pattern in India are a sustained economic growth, rising per capita income, rapid urbanization and a change in the food habits of urban people. There are also voices in support of this shift from the trade perspective to enhance the export of tropical fruits and vegetable and to restrict the cheap imports of commodities such as edible oil. Vocal advocates of this form of farming point towards the advantage of exporting high value crops and using the money so earned to import staple food. It is altogether a different matter that the recent global food scarcity has stumped this line of argument hollow as countries with deep pockets are either rationing food or trying to quell food riots. There simply is not enough food across the world to go around.

 

Despite this, there is a gradual and substantial shift in cropped area away from the coarse cereals or millets (such as sorghum, pearl millet, small millet etc.) towards commercial crops. For instance, between 1960 and 2004, almost 20 million hectares or half the area under coarse grains in the country was lost. This shift has been justified on purely commercial grounds. Dubbed as ‘inferior cereals’, the demand for millets is said to be income inelastic, that is their consumption is believed to decrease as the economy progresses and incomes of its citizens rise.

Commercial crops such as oil seeds, cotton, sugarcane, fruits and vegetables have substantially replaced such coarse cereals. Between 1960-2004, the area under oil seeds such as mustard, soybean and sunflower increased by around 8.30 million hectares. The increase in area under cotton and sugarcane together was 2.5 million hectares. A rise in the real price of these commodities, especially during the nineties, was said to be the main driving force behind this shift.

In policy-making circles, this shift is hailed as a movement in the right direction, evidence that Indian farmers are finally responding wisely to the commercial stimuli and market forces. Having subscribed to the flawed presumption, the policy makers ventured even to diversify agriculture in Punjab, the heartland of the Green Revolution, and framed a plan to tear farmers away from the traditional wheat paddy rotation to commercial crops such as maize and oil seeds on at least one million hectares. Thanks to the dwindling buffer stock and mounting burden of import of wheat in the recent days, the crop diversification programme temporarily stands floundered.

Another noteworthy feature of this development is an increase in productivity witnessed both in the displaced as well as displacing crops, especially during the eighties and nineties. For instance, during the period 1960 to 2005, productivity of oil seeds as a group has almost doubled and that of cotton and sugarcane increased by 43 and 160 per cent, respectively. Coarse cereals have been displaced but not entirely replaced, because during the same period the average productivity of bajra and other millets almost doubled. Thus, despite a decline in the area under cultivation, the production of these coarse cereals did not significantly decline.

The growth of the horticulture sector, especially after the era of economic liberalization and globalization, has further boosted the confidence of those advocating diversification to produce high value crops. Horticulture, which includes fruits, vegetable, flower, spice and plantation crops, was spread across 18 million hectares in 2005 and is fast expanding on account of the support provided by the National Horticulture Mission and with the entry of private sector players.

 

The two most important features of the growth of horticulture in recent decades are: (a) diversification towards this sector is taking place mostly under rain-fed conditions, that too among small farmers in the southern and western regions of country which were hitherto neglected during the Green Revolution period and, (b) the horticulture sector has contributed immensely to the growth of agriculture during the nineties in India. For instance, nearly 32 per cent of growth in the Agricultural Gross Domestic Product has come from fruits and vegetable in the recent decades.

The present pattern of crop diversification is aimed at augmenting farm income rather than managing or minimizing risk. More than the yield, a rise in the real price due to favourable market and trade forces is said to be the main driving force behind the shift in the area towards commercial crops in recent years. As is well understood, relying on markets to determine the income of small and marginal farmers increases their vulnerability and has thus aggravated the agrarian crisis.

 

As was demonstrated by the Green Revolution, Indian farmers are extremely price responsive. In recent years, when these farmers received positive price signals and incentives from the government, they shifted to cultivating cash crops. However, agriculture commodity prices are not governed by supply and demand parameters alone. Ever since the globalization of agriculture markets, factors such as subsidies in developed countries, tariffs, international commodity cartels, speculation in commodity markets among others, have played an important role in determining prices. By promoting cash crops, the farmers have thus been made vulnerable to price fluctuations that they have no control over.

It, therefore, comes as no surprise that the bulk of farmers’ suicides in India during the last decade involved those who cultivated cash crops. On one hand, cultivation of cash crops requires higher capital investment and, on the other, the likelihood of getting a remunerative price in the market is not in the cultivators’ control. The case of cotton is an interesting example where the government’s announcement of a higher support price did not translate to procurement by government agencies in Vidarbha and other regions of the country.

Instead of weaning farmers away from this practice, the government is persisting with the same line and has tripled the credit availability to farmers in the last four years. Given this, the chances of increased credit translating into increased income to farmers will remain a mirage. No wonder the government was forced to step in with a farm loan waiver in the 2008-09 Union Budget and the possibility of more such waivers in the future cannot be ruled out.

More importantly, the current complacency on food security is short-sighted and requires a thorough reconsideration. First, in spite of an increase in productivity over the years, yields of the principle cereals in India is abysmally low compared to that of developed countries. For instance, our average rice yield is less than a quarter that of a farmer in America, our wheat yield is a third that of a British farmer and our maize yield is less than one-fifth of the yield that is achieved by a farmer in Italy.

 

More worrying is the fact of a declining trend in productivity which has surfaced in recent years in the yields of the principle cereals. For instance, between 2001 to 2005, the average productivity of rice declined by 53 kgs/hectare and that of wheat and maize by 44 kgs/ha and 114 kgs/ha respectively. This has obvious implications for food security.

Let us take the simple statistics of per capita net availability of food grains that should give sufficient cause for concern. Between 1960 and 2004, per capita net availability of food grains came down from 469 to 463 grams per day. Even more worrying is that the availability of nutritious pulses has nearly halved from 69 to 40 grams per day per person in this period.

From the point of view of immediate political compulsions, there is an urgent need to increase food production in India. And yet, no country can afford to neglect the long-term sustainability of its agricultural system. Against the backdrop of liberalization and globalization, it is also difficult for a country like India to discount market and trade forces in the agricultural sector. And hence it is a real challenge to seek an alternative model of agricultural development in which these three objectives – food security, sustainability and trade – are amicably balanced by arriving at an accepted level of trade-off among them. A three-pronged strategy might serve to go some way in achieving these goals.

 

Strengthen Green Revolution agriculture: The government must further increase subsidy, support and ‘interventions’ to strengthen the ‘food-baskets’ in the heartlands of the Green Revolution in India. In the interim, an immediate attempt must be made to enhance the environmental sustainability of agriculture under command irrigation without affecting the supply of food grains. Institutional reforms such as reinforcing the water users associations and increasing efficiency in water management and distribution systems under major irrigation areas are a few steps urgently required in this regard. It is also advisable to consider water saving paddy cultivation methods such as the Madagascar system and aerobic rice cultivation in the command areas specializing in rice cultivation.

Instead of relying on a few high yielding varieties, an enlarged ‘varietal portfolio’ should be considered for the heartland of the Green Revolution regions specializing in rice and wheat production. For instance, there are several time-tested traditional rice varieties which are saline resistant, drought tolerant, as well as pest and disease resistant. A careful breeding strategy to evolve varieties not only for marketed benefits like yield, but also for their sustainability attributes mentioned above would go a long way in enlarging the varietal portfolio without affecting food production in the Green Revolution regions which occupy around 30 per cent of the cropped area in the country.

 

Promote dry land diversification: The remaining 70 per cent of the country’s arable land, which depends on rainfall, is best suited to promoting a diverse cropping system which includes millet, pulse and oilseeds. Conservation of soil and water through a watershed approach and dry farming technologies should be seriously attempted in these areas. There are biodiversity rich agricultural niches, such as the millets hotspots mentioned above, tribal agriculture, kitchen gardening and homestead farming in the ecologically sensitive regions such as the Western Ghats and the Himalayan and North East regions of India. These agricultural niches should be strengthened by actively involving the farming communities who are integral to the biodiversity of these niches.

Assistance can also be sought from NGOs such as DDS (Hyderabad), Navdanya (New Delhi) and the GREEN Foundation (Bangalore) who have been involved in the conservation of agro-biodiversity for working closely with local farming communities. These initiatives pave the way for a community controlled local food security in India.

In addition, government interventions such as procurement of millets and including them under government programmes such as the public distribution system, midday meals to school children and food for work under the NREG programme, would go a long way in achieving not only a genuine crop diversification but also much needed food and nutritional security in a country like India.

 

Decentralized marketing to promote the products of crop diversification: The marketing and trade of the products of crop diversification such as fruits, vegetables and millets to cater to the needs of the health conscious in a burgeoning urban population should be attempted only after food and nutritional security for the entire population has been achieved through increased interventions of the government (in the heartlands of the Green Revolution) and the active involvement of communities (in the diverse dry areas) as discussed above.

However, such markets should be decentralized and under the control of government and/or communities rather than corporate bodies. The promotion of cooperative marketing along the lines of AMUL, SAFAL and HOPCOM in Karnataka, encouraging traditional food resorts such as Vishal and SATWIK in Ahmedabad and easy to access, inexpensive Jhunkal Bhakar joints of Maharashtra are some suggestions in this regard.

The need of the hour is to shield farmers from price volatility, promote sustainable agriculture, guarantee a decent income to farmers, and strive for self-sufficiency in food grain production. A diversification to produce cash crops goes against all the above tenets and will exacerbate the already severe agrarian crisis. The move by the government to gradually withdraw the price and procurement support machinery, both vital safety nets for vulnerable farmers is questionable. The price paid for this may well result in the sacrificing of the country’s food security as also the livelihood security of farmers.