Agricultural Situation in India
India has been known as the demographically the broadest economic sector and plays a significant role in the overall socio-economic fabric of India. In fact, the country ranked as second leading producer of rice and wheat worldwide. In world agriculture statistics in 2010, India ranked as the world's largest farm producer of many fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, major spices, select fresh meats, select fibrous crops such as jute, several staples such as millets and castor oil seed. In addition, the country is also the one of the largest output of various dry fruits, textile raw materials, roots and tuber crops, eggs, coconut, sugarcane, fish, and various kinds of vegetables. In the same year, India had acquired 80 percent of agricultural products that include coffee and cotton. In 2011, the country had tremendously increased the livestock and poultry meat production in the international market.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_India)
Furthermore, in fiscal year ending June 2011, Indian agriculture accomplished tremendously an all time record farm production of 85.9 million tons of wheat, which was a 6.3 percent higher compared to the preceding year. Even the harvest of rice in India had also struck a new record of 95.3 million tons, which was a 7% raise from the production during the previous year. This abundant harvest of farm products contributed 71 kilos of wheat and 80 kilos of rice to every member of Indian household in 2011. And, it even became higher in per capita consumption of rice as to compare with the rice production of Japan. This Indian enormous farm output even led to 2 billion exports of wheat and rice in 2011 to other countries in the world. Moreover, the country has been also famous of its abundant industries of aquaculture and catch fishery. The fishery business in India started to boom during 1990s and 2010s, as Indian fish capture production doubled, on the other hand, the Indian fish capture harvest became triple in output. It can be recalled that in 2008, the country became the world’s sixth largest producer of marine and freshwater capture fisheries, and the second largest aquaculture farmed fish producer. It had able to export 600,000 metric tons of fish products to many countries in the globe, most especially to the African regions.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_India)
Nevertheless, in 2009, the agriculture and allied sectors such as forestry and fisheries had only acquired 16.6 percent in GDP; it was with the joint effort of 50 percent of the total numbers of workers in the country. As a result, the economic contribution of agriculture sector in India had been declining steadily during the year. Another report came out that in 2008; the population in India grew bigger than its ability to produce staple food for the whole populace.
Based on the report dated 15 April 2009 in The Independent online site, there were 1,500 farmers who committed mass suicide in India due to enormous debt resulted from scarcity in their farm production. This agricultural condition was even triggered by the continuing drop down of water level in various farms. In response to this situation, the Indian government had implemented extra ordinary measures to help many farmers to save their farms from total losses.Today, agricultural economy in India has been undergoing structural changes; its GDP share has dropped from 43 to 16 percent. Due to rapid economic growth in industrial services, as well as in other economic sectors in the country; the Indian agriculture policy aims to improve food self-sufficiency, at the same time, to alleviate food distribution among the Indian population. In the same way, the government also targets to support extra measures that will steadily support the agricultural improvements such as the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for the main agricultural products, farm input subsidies, as well as the price support policy, which implements protection for farmers from quick price fall, as well as to stabilize prices in order to ensure adequate food supplies for public consumption. Consequently, the most concern now by the Indian government is the poor maintenance of many irrigation systems in the country, and as part of this problem, there have been lacking of good infrastructure programs that hampered on the further growth and development of the agricultural sector as well as of the entire economy of the country.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_India)
In spite of some economic challenges, India remains the stable country when it comes to agricultural independence is concern. Undoubtedly, for more than 50 years since its lack of restrictions, India has made a massive evolution towards food security. Though, Indian population has tripled, but the good thing is the country’s food-grain production has been more than quadrupled. In other words, there has been a substantial supply of food in the country that can suffice the demands of the entire Indian population, aside from the fact that the country has the great potential to still export their products successfully to various countries in the world.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_India
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/1500-farmers-commit-mass-suicide-in-india-1669018.html
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