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

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Title Agricultural Production and Marketing of Major Food Crops and Spices in West Bengal – Status and Strategies
Not Available
 
Creator Subhasis Mandal
D Burman
U K Mandal
P C Sharma
 
Subject Agricultural production
Food crops
Growth and trend
Marketing strategy
West Bengal
Price policy
Agricultural marketing reforms
New Farm Acts
FPOs
 
Description Agricultural marketing in West Bengal
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.
Not Available
 
Date 2021-11-19T11:48:51Z
2021-11-19T11:48:51Z
2021-10-01
 
Type Policy Paper
 
Identifier Mandal Subhasis, Burman D, Mandal UK and Sharma PC, (2021). Agricultural Production and Marketing of Major Food Crops and Spices in West Bengal – Status and Strategies, ICAR-CSSRI/Karnal/Policy Paper/2021/01, ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, pp. 45.
Not Available
http://krishi.icar.gov.in/jspui/handle/123456789/67539
 
Language English
 
Relation ICAR-CSSRI/Karnal/Policy Paper 2021/01;
 
Publisher Director, ICAR-CSSRI, Karnal– 132001, Haryana, India