Publications

With the introduction of dwarf and new dwarf high yielding variety of rice and wheat, the food production in India has increased manifold

The innovation alleviated the status of food deficit to a net food surplus country. Rice is the most important crop in India, which plays a critical role in food security.

More importantly, it is a choice crop of the millions of poor and small farmers not only for income but also for household food security.

However, the rice sector has witnessed rapid d3aiamism in production processes. After climbing a height of four-fold increase in production during past four decades, the production curves have started showing downward trend and productivity decelerating since the later half of the 1990s. Is it the beginning of the agrarian impasse (particularly in the rice system), not only in the core green revolution state of Punjab, but also in several other states such as Tamilandu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala etc.

The productivity decline is experienced in other states also including the rainfed areas. Therefore, an in-depth understanding of the changing production and productivity pattern is essential.

The paper analysed spatio-temporal rice related data from secondary sources pertaining to rice growing areas and studied the trends and growth pattern over the decades 1950-51 to 2001-2002.

It covered the information at country level, state level as well as at the disaggregate district level.