Drought or no drought, farm sector adapts to low rainfall

Despite two consecutive years of deficient rains, farm growth was positive in Q2 of 2015-16

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) might have decided to drop the use of the word “drought” from its nomenclature, but even if it had not done so, it would have hardly made a difference. Studies show that Indian agriculture has, over the years, developed an inherent resistance to drought.

The share of agriculture in the overall economy may have fallen, but the proportion of the non-crop sector in the total farm gross domestic product (GDP) has gone up.

In the second quarter of 2015-16, despite two consecutive years of deficient rains, farm growth was positive, owing to greater production in the livestock, forestry and fisheries sectors.

Agriculture and allied activities recorded a marginal increase in the growth rate at 2.2 per cent for the second quarter of 2015-16 (July to September) as compared to the same period last year.

The agriculture and allied sectors grew at 2.1 per cent in the July-September quarter of 2014-15 and were expected to perform poorly this year due to droughts in several parts of the country.

On a quarter-on-quarter basis, too, the agriculture and allied sectors grew from 1.9 per cent in the April-June quarter to 2.2 in the July-September quarter.

A recent study by India Ratings and the National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NCAP) showed that the correlation between the kharif food grain output and the June-September rains declined to 0.3 between 2004-05 and 2013-14 as compared to 0.6 between 1996-97 and 2003-04, which indicates the increased resilience of Indian agriculture to absorb the deficiency in the monsoon.

The NCAP study also showed that the yield loss for rice declined from 16.8 per cent in the 1967-1988 period to 8.1 per cent in the 1988-2005 period. The study also showed that an increase in the irrigated area and in the development and spread of drought-tolerant rice varieties across the country, mainly in rainfed areas, contributed to the fall in yield loss.

“Between 1988 and 2010, on average, 3.4 rice varieties were released annually for rainfed uplands and 4.4 for rainfed shallow lands, representing an increase of 193 per cent and 141 per cent over those released during 1969 to 1987,” the study said.

IMD Director General L S Rathore confirmed on Thursday that the word “drought” would no longer form part of the department’s internal and external communication and that it would be replaced with “rainfall deficiency”.

The department earlier used to term a year as a drought year when rainfall deficiency was more than 10 per cent. When 20 to 40 per cent of the country was experiencing drought conditions, the year was termed “all-India drought year”.

The southwest monsoon in 2015 was 86 per cent of the long period average, which made 2014 and 2015 as the fourth case of two consecutive all-India deficient monsoon years in the last 115 years.