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Agriculture |
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Emerging
Crisis in Punjab Agriculture
II.
Crop wise Performance and Substitution Possibilities
Several indicators can be used to compare performance of
various crop alternatives and to get an idea about the possibility
and consequences of diversification of existing crop mix. Our
interest is to study the performance in terms of value productivity,
profitability, employment and impact on environment and natural
resources. Detailed information on resource use, costs, returns,
value of output and other relevant aspects for the important crops
grown at the sample households is presented in Table
2 which can be used to compare inter-crop performance and to
reveal impact of crop substitution on profitability, resource use
and environment, etc. Impact of cultivation of different crops on soil health can
be captured to some extent by comparing use of inorganic fertiliser
and weedicides in these crops as these inputs are said to be causing
problems like soil chemicalisation and nitrate pollution. Among the
crops of rabi season, use of inorganic fertiliser is highest in
potato cultivation (108 kg NPK/acre) followed by wheat with 78 kg of
plant nutrients. Requirement and application of plant nutrients is
quite high in vegetable crops but this requirement is being met
mainly from farm yard manure. In wheat crop, small expenditure on
micro nutrients was also incurred. Use of herbicide/weedicides has
been quite common in wheat cultivation. Application of plant protection chemicals, which has been
used to indicate the impact on environment pollution, is nil in
wheat crop, whereas, potato, rapeseed/mustard and rabi vegetables
involve frequent use of such chemicals. Labour employment is 307
hours/acre in potato and 255 hours in other vegetable crops of rabi
season. Per acre labour use in wheat, barley and mustard cultivation
is around 127 hours. Coming to water use, sample farmers applied 8
irrigations to potato and vegetables and 5-6 irrigations to other
crops. Value productivity and net return from vegetable crops is
significantly higher than the competing crops. Potato and wheat rank
second in productivity and net returns respectively. Among kharif crops, highest use of inorganic fertiliser is in
paddy (106 kg NPK/acre) followed by vegetable crops (77 kg). Minimum
application of NPK as well as farm yard manure is reported in moong
crop. Micro nutrients were applied only to paddy crop. Weedicides
use is quite common in paddy and cotton crops. No chemicals were
used for weed control in pulses. Highest human labour use was
reported in vegetable cultivation which provides 539 hours
employment per acre. Cotton ranks second with 276 hours and paddy
enjoys third position with 248 hours of labour use per acre. As was
the case with rabi season, vegetable cultivation gave highest output
and income in kharif season also. This was followed by paddy. Sugarcane is another important crop which is often suggested
as an alternative to reduce domination of wheat and paddy in the
state. Since sugarcane is an annual crop and yields output once in a
year, its performance was compared with the performance of
wheat-paddy rotation. Per acre labour use in sugarcane is 598 hours
compared to 374 hours in wheat and paddy. On revenue side, one acre
of sugarcane at the sample farms provided gross return of about Rs
11,000 which is Rs 3,500 lower compared to wheat-paddy rotation.
Similarly, net return from sugarcane is 15.4 per cent lower compared
to the combined net return from wheat and paddy crops. Besides profitability, risk plays an important role in the
choice of crops. Wheat and paddy exhibit lowest instability in their
yield during the last two decades (vide Table
3). Because of strong and assured government price support,
price instability is also lower in wheat and paddy. Consequently,
gross returns from wheat and paddy fluctuated only by 10 and 19 per
cent from the trend line, respectively, compared to 29 to 44 per
cent instability in the other crops (Table 3). The results presented in the preceding paragraphs show that
the performance of wheat crop, at prevailing inputs and output
prices, is better compared to other crops of rabi season in most
respects. Use of plant protection chemicals, which are considered
harmful for environment and for human health, is almost nil in wheat
crop, whereas other crops capable of competing with wheat require
heavy doses of plant protection chemicals. Water requirement of
wheat is also quite low compared to potato and vegetables. No doubt,
weedicide use is highest in wheat crop but this is not due to
crop’s intrinsic requirement; there are economic reasons for it
and the same function can be performed by human labour. Among kharif
crops, vegetable crops give significantly higher profitability
compared to paddy. Besides, vegetable crops require 1/4th irrigation
compared to paddy. However, compared to paddy, vegetables involve
very high use of plant protection chemicals. Thus, it can be
concluded that no crop alternative is superior to wheat and paddy in
all the aspects and any change in crop pattern away from wheat and
paddy would have mixed impact on crop income and ecological and
environmental variables. If on one hand any change in crop mix
reduces degradation of soil and mitigates water scarcity, on the
other hand it results in environmental pollution through use of
plant protection chemicals. Suggestions have also been made to diversify crop pattern in the state through fruit crops, and concerted efforts have been made in this direction in the past two decades. These efforts have met very limited success and the area under fruits has not reached even half a per cent of total cropped area. Though demand-side factors for promoting horticulture in the country are favourable the supply-side factors in Punjab are not promising. The state does not enjoy the natural (climatic and soil related) advantage in commercial production of quality fruits. Except for kinnow, quality of most of the fruits produced in the state remains inferior to the quality of fruits from other major producing regions. For example, grapes, mangoes, oranges, pear, plum produced in Punjab cannot compete in the market with grapes from Maharashtra and Karnataka, mangoes from Uttar Pradesh (UP), Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra, oranges from Nagpur region and pear and plum from the hill region.
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