Keywords: Food grain production, VECM , Johansen Cointegration.
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Introduction: The Vedas have vividly articulated the concept of
“Annamayakosa”, which basic exemplifies the importance of food and
food grains. Food grains are primarily consumed by all individuals as
staple food to feed the basic necessity called Food. Unlike other crops
they form a sizable portion of any Indian plate and simultaneously
contribute significantly in terms of calories and quantity of food
consumed. In countries like India they also bear the popularity of being
the traditional staples and funding the average Indian body with enough
energy and carbohydrate to engage in the age-old tradition of
agriculture.
The production of food grains in India has several inbuilt advantages
towards the society and economy as a whole. In India they occupy
2/3rd of the total cropped area, which amounts to be
219.33 million hectors in 2019. This evidently proves the agricultural
dependency of farmers on production of food grains. The reasons of such
significance can be attributed to requirement of less expertise in the
production process, more use of surplus manpower and most importantly
the tradition of allocating some portion of land for production of food
grains in order to avail the minimal food requirement for a year. So
after using to feed the family the surplus amount is spent on commercial
purposes. Evidently it has contribution in both subsistence and
commercial level of agriculture. The employment of rural population as a
prominent of rural livelihood is hugely contributed by food grain
production as this gives routine agricultural employment to the largest
portion of rural agricultural workforce. This contribution lies
independent of extensive operation of Lewis’s theory of Unlimited supply
of labor in rural India. This fact is highly influenced by the basic
nature of technology and labour mix required for food grain production.
Though it is evident from every ordinary agricultural field in India
that technology has started taking over manpower and substituting it,
but the human contribution id yet to be called as insignificant.
After independence during the Green revolution only, absolute focus was
centralized around food grain production in order to make India
self-sufficient and to ensure food on every Indian plate. After that by
observing the current situation of food grains production in India, it
can be inferred the need for further robust research on the ground of
food grain production. So this paper tries to analyse some determinants
of the same.
Literature Review: Though voluminous research has been conducted o the
determinants of agricultural productivity but very insignificant dive
has been given to this particular site of agriculture i.e. food grains
production. Followings are some of the most important research
literatures that we went through and that inspired this piece of
exploration:
Nayak & Priyadarshini (2017): This paper specifies the long run
simulation between various factors of land productivity and suggests for
non-product specific support from the Government Side. By taking
variables like irrigation, electricity consumption, private expenditure
on agriculture, fertilizers consumption and non-product specific inputs
it tries to elaborate the long run and short run impacts of these
factors on agricultural productivity.
V. M Rao (1992): This paper primarily implied towards further
reorientation of agricultural pricing policy & the government should
concern itself with the major determinants of growth and stability and
with the task of ensuring a market framework with a reasonable degree of
efficiency.
Parikh, Kumar & Darbha (2003): This paper yielded some interesting
findings like, increase in the MSP of wheat and rice leads to decline in
overall GDP, increase in aggregate price index and reduction in
investments. Even the increase in agricultural GDP resulting from higher
MSP dwindles rapidly and only a minuscule positive impact on
agricultural GDP remains by the third year.
Chand (2007): This paper titled “Wheat Supply, Price and Food
Security”, found that wheat production on average has not grown at the
pace equivalent to growth of its demand. While focusing primarily on the
production of wheat, this paper vividly analysed the pricing policy of
wheat and roll of its determinants in ensuring food security in India.
Data Sources & Methodology: This paper basically used timeseries data
of 30 consecutive years, starting from 1989-90 to 2018-19. The datas
collected here are of secondary nature which are collected from various
sources like RBI Statistical Handbook on Indian Economy, Food &
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Census and Economic Information
Center (CEIC). Following is the table of all the variables taken under
consideration.