Agricultural Production and Marketing of Major Food Crops and Spices in West Bengal – Status and Strategies

Abstract

Agricultural production system in West Bengal (WB) is dominant by small-holder farmers who are producing a number of crops with reasonable production efciency but severely constrained with marketing efciency, leading to low agricultural income of farmers. The state has 5.20 million ha of net cropped area, 9.90 million ha of gross cropped area and the cropping intensity is 188%. The cropping pattern is dominated by foodgrains crops (68%), mainly paddy (55%), followed by other food crops such as potato (4.27%), pulses (3.45%), wheat (3.40%), maize (1.53%), spices and condiments (1.30%). During 2000-01 to 2015-16, the cropping pattern has changed to increase in area under maize, pulses, potato, spices and condiments but marginally decreased area under rice and wheat. The state has paddy area of 5.38 million ha followed by pulses (0.46 million ha), potato (0.42 million ha), maize (0.24 million ha), wheat (0.12 million ha) and spices (0.11 million ha). Average yields of these food crops, foodgrains (2.8 t ha-1), paddy (2.9 t ha-1), maize (3.1 t ha-1), pulses (0.10 t ha-1), potato (29 t ha-1) and spices (2.8 t ha-1) have been higher as compared to national average, except wheat (2.7 t ha-1). Area, production and yield of maize has grown (during 2010-2018) by 14%, 17% and 3%, respectively followed by pulses (12%, 15% and 3% for area, production and yield, respectively) and spices (4%, 10% and 6% for area, production and yield, respectively), sign of positive crop diversication towards non-rice crops. Per capita (per year) consumption of rice, wheat, pulses, potato, maize and spices were estimated to be 89 kg, 23.82 kg, 6.57 kg, 44.47 kg, 0.14 kg and 4.48 kg, respectively. With current population (91.3 million), total requirement (consumption demand) for the state was computed as 8.13 million tonnes (t) for rice, 2.18 million t for wheat, 0.60 million t for pulses, 4.06 million t for potato, 0.01 million t for maize and 0.41 million t for spices. The state is surplus in terms of producing rice (surplus quantity is 6.84 t or 46%), potato (8.59 t or 68%) and maize (1.12 t or 99%), whereas decit in production of wheat (1.86 t or 597%), pulses (0.16 t or 35%) and spices (0.07 t or 22%). Agriculture in West Bengal has reached in a stage from which there is a need of strategies to transform agricultural production to agribusiness – from supply push to demand pull. Agriculture production needs to be supported by secondary agriculture through value addition and product diversication to make the sector more vibrant and pushing to next level of growth trajectory. Realising the need, the West Bengal state agricultural marketing department has initiated several proactive policy reforms during last 6-7 years towards ensuring remunerative prices to farmers. Harnessing opportunities for small-holder farmers in the state through implementation new farm acts (2020) and some specic policy suggestions has been highlighted in this policy paper.