Surinder Sud: Is the wheat revolution dying?

FARM VIEW

Is the wheat revolution, the harbinger of the Green Revolution, petering out? This question has assumed relevance partly because certain interest groups have begun voicing the need for wheat imports, but largely because of the stagnation in wheat output since the beginning of this decade.

What is worse, the deceleration in wheat output growth dates back to the 1990s.

The annual growth rate in wheat production dropped from a healthy 3.57 per cent in the 1980s to 2.11 per cent in the 1990s and below 1 per cent in the current decade.

After hitting the peak of 76 million tonnes in 2000, wheat harvest has been hovering around 72 to 74 million tonnes.

The worry about the wheat economy became real this year. The Food Corporation of India's (FCI's) wheat inventories, drawn down heavily already, touched a low of around 4 million tonnes in the beginning of the season.

Besides, wheat procurement from the fresh crop, too, has fallen short by about 2 million tonnes in comparison with previous year's 16.8 million tonnes.

Worse, the wheat production estimates point to a below-expectation harvest.

In fact, the erosion of FCI's stock need not be viewed with concern as it has been the result of a deliberate move to shed burdensome inventories through subsidised exports and liberal use of grains in welfare and food-for-work programmes.

The relatively lower wheat procurement, too, should not be a cause for much concern. It only reflects higher purchases by private trade and withholding of some stocks by big farmers in anticipation of better prices in lean season. These stocks have sooner or later to come out in the market.

However, the below-anticipation wheat harvest for the fifth successive year should be a matter of real discomfiture and should make wheat scientists and policy makers sit up.

The agriculture ministry, which had earlier reckoned the wheat harvest to be around 74.05 million tonnes, has scaled it down to 73.5 million tonnes.

Wheat experts, who were hoping to bag a harvest of around 75 million tonnes, now feel that the production would be just around 73 million tonnes.

The wheat trade, on the other hand, is projecting a still lower output of around 71 to 72 million tonnes.

Some causes for a low wheat yield have, of course, been identified. Noted wheat expert and Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) director S Nagarajan holds the unexpected emergence of two diseases just close to the ripening of the crop responsible for yield drop.

Black rust, a dreaded plant disease, resurfaced after over 10 years, affecting the predominantly grown PBW-343 variety in Punjab and adjoining areas when the crop was heading towards maturity.

Another relatively lesser-known disease, called head scab, struck the durum wheat (hard wheat used for making noodles and pasta products) around the same time to cause yield loss.

This disease is endemic to North America and has not been reported in India in the recent past.

Poor wheat yields in earlier years of this decade had been caused largely by unfavourable climatic factors, such as untimely rains or temperature rise.

Last year, for instance, a sudden increase in temperature towards the end of March had hastened wheat ripening, reducing the grain-growth period and hence final grain yield.

What needs to be realised is that such factors are bound to recur and it is for agriculture scientists to find the ways and means to tackle them. In the past, too, the wheat crop had faced threats to its survival but a way out was found every time.

At one stage, two dreaded weeds, Phalaris minor and wild oats, had posed a formidable danger to wheat cultivation. A stage had come when weed plants would outnumber the crop plants in fields, forcing farmers to consider abandoning wheat cultivation.

But fortunately, its control was discovered through pesticides and agronomic management.

Then came the threat from the rust diseases "" yellow, brown and black rusts "" that spread like an epidemic throughout the north-western wheat belt.

These, seemingly incurable maladies, were tamed by breeding rust-resistant varieties and breaking the disease cycle by saturating the wheat-growing southern hilly region with rust-immune varieties.

That was the region where the rust pathogen used to survive in summer when the crop was not grown in plains.

Indeed, scientists again need to put their heads together to ponder over the causes of the persistently low wheat production phase and devise a strategy to reverse the trend.

Wheat, being a non-monsoon dependent, winter season cereal, is critical for the country's food security and any deceleration in its production growth is unwarranted. Wheat output needs to grow annually by at least 2.5 per cent to keep pace with the rise in demand.