The Hindu Business Line : Cotton up, oilseeds down

ONE MORE KHARIF season harvest is upon us. Crop estimates — both government and private — suggest limited or marginal growth in some and de-growth in others. The Agriculture Ministry's first advance estimates for 2005-06 covering foodgrains (rice, coarse cereals, pulses), oilseeds, cotton and sugarcane are being viewed with some scepticism as the numbers are slightly at variance with the perception of the industry and trade. There will, of course, be some fine-tuning in the Government's second and third estimates; but it will take time. More important, of course, is the fact that overall, the crop production numbers are disturbing.

Compared with industry and services, the agriculture sector's performance in the last three years strikes a disconcertingly contrasting note, even as it pulls down the overall economic growth prospects. It may be easy to explain away the annual average growth rate of 1.1 per cent in the first three years of the Tenth Plan period by blaming the poor rainfall pattern. But when contrasted against the 4 per cent average annual growth envisaged in the National Agricultural Policy released in July 2000, the below-normal performance becomes stark and rings alarm bells. Together with low public stocks, tightening domestic supplies translate to rising dependence on imports, and, worse, firm prices and, inevitably, inflation. High energy prices further queer the pitch for consumers.

Welfare programmes usually become the first casualty in such times. Because food has to be both affordable and accessible to the really needy, there shall be no compromise on various food-for-work schemes being implemented by the Government. An aspect of commercial crop production that seems odd is the divergent trend in cotton and oilseeds. Over the last three seasons, while cotton output has gone into a higher orbit (over 230 lakh bales), successfully breaking the sluggishness of the past decade, oilseeds continue to remain trapped at a low level of output (220-230 lakh tonnes), stubbornly refusing to take the sustained growth path. Yields — one of the lowest in the world at less than 1,000 kg per hectare — seem to have hit a plateau. Viewed from this angle, the performance of the Technology Mission on Oilseeds (set up as far back as 1986) has been far from satisfactory. Not only should the TMO be revamped, but it is also time to infuse some accountability in the various schemes such as the Oilseeds Production Programme. It would be foolhardy to believe that higher minimum support prices by themselves would drive production up.

As for cotton, it may be tempting to attribute this fine fibre's success to technology-driven cultivation (introduction of genetically-modified Bt. Cottonseed three seasons ago); but this alone may not explain the quantum jump in production. It is possible that prices and market support policies too played a part. The reasons for the success of the Technology Mission on Cotton (TMC) and failure of the TMO have to be researched. Production-related issues of oilseeds deserve to be addressed with great urgency as otherwise the market will get increasingly distorted with rising dependence on imports.

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