Agriculture Sector In India

The agriculture sector in India has undergone significant structural changes in past few decades. The share of agriculture in GDP has decreased from 30 percent in 1990-91 to 14.5 percent in 2010-11 indicating a shift from the traditional agrarian economy towards a service dominated one (Fig 1.1). The Green Revolution transformed the economy from a chronic food deficient to a self sufficient economy. By the year 2000 there were mounting surplus of food grains. The per capita availability of foodgrains increased as shown in fig1.2

Fig 1.1: Sectoral Composition of GDP Fig 1.2 Per Capita Availability of Cereals and Pulses Source: DES, DAC.

Whereas the decrease in contribution of agriculture sector in Gross

It is argued that country should diversify agriculture to High value commodities. The sustained growth in income and urbanization has resulted in a shift in demand towards high-value agricultural commodities (HVA) (Ravi and Roy 2006). Moreover, with globalization and liberalization there are new opportunities for the export of high-value products whose demand is ever increasing at the global level. There has been increasing flow of exports of high value food commodities such as fruits, vegetables, dairy, poultry, fish, and processed food from developing to developed countries ( Diaz-Bonilla and Recca, 2000). The high value food commodities are are labor-intensive and generate quick returns, the farmers can utilize their surplus in production of these commodities and augment their incomes (Joshi et al. 2002; Barghouti et al. 2005; Weinberger and Lumpkin,

Viz-a-viz Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh. Given the nature of food grain production and buffer stocks the food self sufficiency in India is vitally dependent on surplus food production in Punjab- Haryana regions where green revolution was successful. These regions contributed nearly fifty percent to buffer stocks. The contribution in case of wheat is as high as 70% and 30% for rice. A large part of the country is still chronically deficient in food grain production and yet to see the adoption of high yielding varieties . With diverse agro-climatic conditions the country has immense potential for producing variety of