INDIA – The Indian government aims to increase India’s pulse production after observing that imports of pulses have hit a six-year peak in FY24 due to rising demand.
The government aims to do this by incentivising diversion of large tracts of paddy- growing areas, especially non-traditional ones in eastern and central India, into production of pulses through assured purchase arrangements, and by making available quality seeds.
Officials said from the 2024-25 crop season (July-June), agencies like farmers’ cooperative Nafed and National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India (NCCF) have commenced pre-registration of farmers who would grow pulses varieties – tur, urad and mansor.
Officials added that currently, the area under pulses is only a fraction of the country’s top crop area, and their cultivation is confined to just 55 districts mostly in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Rajasthan.
“We will purchase these three varieties of pulses, for which we are import dependent, from the farmers using both price support scheme (PSS) and Price Stabilisation Fund,” an official said.
In the last two years these agencies could not afford three varieties of pulses as prices were way above the minimum support price (MSP) because of decline in production and rise in demand for pulses.
The country’s pulses production increased to 24.24 million tonne (MT) in 2023-24 crop year from 23.02 MT in 2019-20 crop year. The pulses output in 2021-22 was 27.3 MT.
“The increase in demand for pulses with rising income levels has far surpassed nominal increases in output,” an official said.
The main objectives of the pulses mission include boosting availability of climate resilient seeds, enhancing productivity and cushioning pulse farmers from price fluctuations.
India imports pulses in significant quantities. In the last five years ending FY24, India has imported more than 11% of its annual pulses consumption mostly from Canada, Russia, Australia, Myanmar, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique.
According to the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), decline in production in the last two years and increase in domestic demand led to drastic increase in market prices and imports reached a 6-year peak of nearly 4.8 MT in 2023-24.
The Commission has recommended that availability of quality seed, dissemination of region-specific and system-based technologies and packages of practices and remunerative prices to farmers should be ensured.
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