Preface
The present study sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India is aimed at assessing the Marketable and Marketed Surplus of Major Foodgrains in Haryana by examining growth, domestic consumption, retention for seed, feed and kind payments. Primary as well as secondary sources of data have been used in order to fulfill these objectives. Primary data were collected through a field survey of 300 farmers in the selected districts of Karnal and Bhiwani in Haryana growing paddy, wheat and bajra. The results of this study reveal (i) growth in production of paddy, wheat and bajra in
Haryana was 4.01, 3.81 and 3.35 per cent per annum between 1980-81 and 2008-09. In case of paddy, it was driven by area expansion while area as well as yield was responsible for growth in wheat production. Bajra was an exception since, growth in production occurred exclusively due to yield growth despite negative growth in area, (ii) the districts of Mewat, Bhiwani and Mahendergarh registered higher growth in the production of paddy, wheat and bajra, respectively, despite low coverage of irrigation (iii) farmers retained 0.88 per cent of paddy, 6.95 per cent of wheat and 1.31 per cent of bajra produce for domestic consumption, (iv) marketed surplus of paddy, wheat and bajra on sampled farms was 95.49, 84.26 and 81.47 per cent respectively. It was found relatively low in farms upto size class of 2 ha. but the proportion steadily increased thereafter, (v) a positive relationship emerged between farm size and share in the total marketed surplus of selected foodgrains since quantum of production was found to be the major determinant of marketed surplus, (vi) infrastructural, institutional and technological factors together facilitated growth in marketed surplus and production. The following policy measures are suggested to improve the marketed surplus scenario of paddy, wheat and bajra in Haryana (i) Haryana has a great potential of increasing marketed surplus by raising yield rates in districts with limited irrigation availability by facilitating adoption of technology with full package of practices, (ii) in view of extremely limited scope of area expansion in major paddy areas, priority may be accorded to R & D in yield raising innovative technologies to further increase production, (iii) Provision of institutional credit for small and marginal farmers for agricultural purposes on easy terms and conditions by expanding institutional sources of credit, (iv)
making efforts to popularize use of ICT for eliciting information on important matters related to agriculture
We are grateful to Prof. Pami Dua, Chairperson, GB and Prof. Kanchan Chopra, former Chairperson, GB for their constant encouragement to complete this study. We express our thanks to the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India for providing support during the course of this study. Thanks are due to the coordinator of the study, Prof. Vijay Paul
Sharma, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad for providing the study design, tabulation scheme and useful comments on the draft report. We are thankful to Dr. Munish Alagh, IIM, Ahmedabad for his involvement in this study. We are also thankful to Deputy Directors, Agriculture of Karnal and Bhiwani for the useful discussion on various aspects of the project. Thanks are due to my colleagues for their contribution during the course of this study, Dr. Subhash Chandra; Research Investigator looked after the management of primary data with the assistance of Mr. Krishna Kant, Research
Fellow. Mr. Narinder Singh, Technical Assistant accomplished a part of secondary data. Ms. Shalini Singh, Research Fellow deserves praise for helping in several ways towards completion of this study. Thanks are due to Mr. Sri Chand for carrying out major part of word processing of the report. Author gratefully acknowledges the support of all the staff
members of the AER Centre, Delhi University.