Indian agriculture witnessed another year of record foodgrain production, of 354 million tonnes in 2024-25, per the third Advance Estimates released on May 28, 2025, by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare. However, the record production continued to be largely confined to major cereals — rice and wheat. Crop diversification to coarse cereals, pulses and oilseeds for nutritional security has remained a distant goal. Consequently, the import of pulses stood at a record 7.3 million tonnes, at $5.5 billion in 2024-25, registering about 53 per cent and 46 per cent increase, respectively, over the previous year. Similarly, import of vegetable oils stood at $17 billion in 2024-25.

Continued reliance on imports for essential food commodities like pulses and oilseeds, exposes the country to global price and supply uncertainties, apart from costs to the exchequer. In addition, extensive cultivation of rice and wheat is also leading to unsustainable and inefficient use of soil and groundwater resources. Under such a situation, there is an urgent need for strong policy measures to promote crop diversification for sustainable use of agricultural land and water resources and self-sufficiency in nutritional security.

Various missions

In this regard, efforts to promote crop diversification have been implemented over the past four decades or so, through various missions on pulses, oilseeds and millets. The latest among such measures is the six-year Mission for Atmanirbharata in Pulses, with an outlay of ₹1,000 crore in Budget 2025, primarily to ensure remunerative prices for farmers by procuring all the quantities of tur, urad and masoor offered for sale at MSP in the next four years. In addition, there has been a notable increase in procurement of pulses and oilseeds during the past few years. Procurement of pulses rose from about 11 lakh tonnes in 2021-22 to 24 lakh tonnes in 2023-24, while that of oilseeds increased from about 2 lakh tonnes to about 14 lakh tonnes in the corresponding years according to NAFED.

Notwithstanding these efforts, pulses production has remained erratic and in deficit — in the range of 22 to 27 million tonnes (mt) since 2016-17. In fact, the output declined from the record 27 mt in 2021-22 to 25 mt in 2024-25 despite a notable increase in MSP and procurement operations. While oilseeds production has also remained in deficit, with moderate increase during the last decade — from about 25 mt in 2015-16 to about 42.6 mt in 2024-25 — cereal production rose by about 94 mt, from 235 mt to 329 mt during the same period.

One of the major reasons for farmers’ reluctance to shift from cereals to other crops is the significant yield gap. The average yield of cereals was more than three times that of pulses and double that of oilseeds during the triennium ending (TE) 2024-25. The yield gap is much wider when compared to individual crops like rice and wheat.

In addition to higher yield, cultivation of cereals is largely mechanised especially for the labour intensive operations like harvesting, whereas that of pulses and oilseeds is still largely dependent on manual labour. As a result, farmers in major rice and wheat growing areas are constrained by labour availability and costs to embark on crop diversification.

Thus, to promote crop diversification from rice and wheat to nutrient-rich and environment-friendly crops like pulses and oilseeds, it is imperative to enhance their yields and bring them on a par or above that of major cereals. In addition, with rapidly growing weather aberrations from climate change and deteriorating groundwater resources, the need of the hour is to develop high yielding, climate resilient and drought tolerant crop varieties and cultivation practices. Towards this, there is an urgent to promote research and development of crop varieties, innovation in technology for mechanisation of farm operations, adoption of sustainable cultivation practices, etc.

Amarender is Joint Director, School of Crop Health Policy Support Research, ICAR-National Institute of Biotic Stress Management, Raipur, and Tulsi is Senior Economist, Sustainable Finance and Agriculture, Mumbai. Views are personal

Published on June 24, 2025