The crop has been included in the government’s ambitious Rs 500 crore crop diversification strategy for North Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. On the export front too, the crop is showing exceedingly good results and export of maize for the first time reached a record around 5 million tonnes in 2012-13 up 24% from previous years, making India a prominent player in the world maize market dominated largely by US. In India maize is cultivated largely in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
India’s annual maize production varies between 20-22 million tonnes, of which around 63-64% is used as feed meal and 16% for industrial purposes like starch and alcohol makers while the remaining is sold in the open market. It is grown both during the kharif and rabi seasons.
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“Almost a decade back industrial use of maize was just 5-6% and that for feed meal was less than 50%, but now the demand has grown exponentially as India’s poultry and livestock industry is rising at almost 10% per annum,” noted expert on Maize and President of Indian Maize Development Association, Sain Dass told Business Standard.
He said as 80% of the feedmeal comprises of maize, its demand is maximum among livestock and poultry traders.
Eminent agriculture economist and Chairman of Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices (CACP) Ashok Gulati said that maize is a crop which could help Indian farmers in many ways and can be a good and profitable alternative to paddy.
He said government should provide some incentive other than price support mechanism to encourage farmers to grow maize as it has ready use in starch and feedmeal industries. "We need a Rs 10,000 per hectare viability gap funding in maze to kick-start a revolution, which can have remarkable results," Gulati said.
"The biggest problem in promoting maize is not adequate end-user industries. Once, government promotes its production, it should also ensure that farmers get adequate price for their maize, either from the private or government or else no one will cultivate the crop," another expert said.
Listing the achievements of maize over other cereals crops, Gulati said the in states like Punjab, groundwater tables can be greatly enhanced if maize cultivation is promoted in place of paddy as it requires just 1/5th of the total water required to grow paddy and gives much higher returns.
“Hybrid seed technology is available off-the-shelf in maize which can immediately double the yields, from the current around 2.5 tonnes per hectare as against the 10 tonne per hectare in the US,” Gulati said.
“Presently, only 30% of the total annual maize acreage of around 8.0-8.5 million tonnes is under single crop hybrids, which can easily increased,” Dass of IMDA said, adding that among all the cereal crops, maize has the second highest area under hybrid seed varieties after bajra – in which hybrid seed varieties are used in almost 50% of the total area.
Going forwards, Dass feels that the good monsoon showers in 2013, will push up India’s annual acreage under maize by atleast a million hectare.
“Last year, maize was sown in around 8.5 million hectares, of which 6.5 million was during the kharif season, while this year kharif maize acreage is already 7.5 million hectare. Hence, I’am hopeful that not only the overall area under maize will rise, but production will also increase to over 23 million tonnes which will a new record,” he said.
Acreage of maize has shown considerable increase in drought-affected areas of Maharashtra and Karnataka in 2013, which adds another feather to the crop’s growing pedigree. EoM