Sunil Jain: Weak pulse

While the country's agro-science establishment is trying to focus on increasing yields in wheat and rice, the Consortium of Indian Farmers Association's (CIFA) latest data-set shows, it's doing a remarkably poor job in other areas (see "Poor Crop", Oct 25 Perspectives, for previous CIFA data on the decline in new crop varieties). CIFA has put out data on tur, India's second-largest pulse crop and shows that yield levels today are way below what they were in even 1960-61, as a result of which, though the land use has grown from 2.4 million hectares in 1960-61 to 3.5 million hectares in 2004-05, production is virtually the same "" 2.1 million tonnes in 1960-61 versus 2.3 million in 2004-05. Interestingly, Myanmar's yield today is around two-thirds higher as compared to that in 1990-91, while India's has fallen marginally. In urad, CIFA shows, Myanmar had a yield of 718 kg per hectare in 1993 as against India's 460 "" by 2004, this rose to 1,167 in Myanmar and fell to 419 in India. 
 

Back to the '60s (Area, production and yield of tur dal in India)
	1960-61	1970-71	1980-81	1990-91	2000-01	2004-05
Area  (mn ha)	2.4	2.7	2.8	3.6	3.6	3.5
Production  (mn tonnes)	2.1	1.9	2.0	2.4	2.2	2.3
Yield (kg/hectare)	849	709	689	673	618	667
Myanmar Yield  (kg/hectare)	--	--	--	636	895	1,006