Production of pulses in India: An econometric analysis

The present study is an attempt to undertake the task of verifying the various factors influencing the production of pulses but especially it focuses on Area due to the availability of the data. Hence Production relation revealed that the production of pulses mainly depends on area since from many decades. Though India is a major pulses growing country in the world, it has faced the problem of supply and demand gap in pulses since mid seventies. Depending on the domestic short fall in pulses production stagnant production and ever increasing population has lead to declining per capita availability of pulses over the years. Growth trends in production of pulses suggest that area under cultivation has not been able to bring desired increase in production of pulses so as to meet increasing demand. The Government has focused on improving pulse production through various programmes and prices support policies but no significant progress has so far been observed since from the above analysis growth rate of production of pulses is found to be negative. Some of the factors discouraging pulses sector are stagnation in production, poor area expansion, low yield and relative low profitability, decrease in per capita land availability, increase in demand-supply gap, heavy dependence on imports, inefficient marketing, etc.