Analysis of Spatial and Temporal Diversification in Indian Agriculture

After the independence Indian agriculture focused mainly on the food security issues targeting more of food rains, but in the recent decades Indian agriculture able to meet food demand and became net food grain exporter, this was achieved from technology called green revolution, till then agriculture in India was of subsistence in nature but in the recent decades agricultural concern shifted from food grain crops to commercial or non-food grain crops to meet economic and financial demand of farmers. The results of the analysis indicated that Southern region witnessed composite entropy index value crossing 50 per cent in case of cereals (0.63) and total crop sector (0.62) during 2005-17 periods. While, Western region revealed an average of five periods composite entropy index of 0.53, 0.52 and 0.51 in case of total food grains, oilseeds and total crop sector. Northern region shown significant improvement in diversification index from 0.27 to 0.41 during 1955-65 to 1985-95. Thereafter, downfall in the diversification index was noticed. Exactly the reverse trend was seen in case of pulses and oilseeds. Commercial, fiber crops and over all crop sector revealed consistent increase in diversification index from 0.16 to 0.32, 0.21 to 0.29 and 0.40 to 0.49. In the eastern region cereals and pulses drawn the significant increase in diversification index value from 0.35 to 0.49 and 0.42 to 0.54 during study period. North eastern region all crop groups have showcased remarkable progress in terms of diversification index which was 0.24 to 0.46 in cereals, 0.01 to 0.47 in pulses, 0.24 to 0.46 in total food grains, 0.06 to 0.42 in oilseeds, 0.10 to 0.19 in commercial crops, 0.12 to 0.34 in fiber crops and 0.41 to 0.43 during study period. At all India level composite entropy index for cereals, pulses, oilseeds and fiber crops have shown a slight improvement, but commercial and over all crop sector have witnessed significant improvement having diversification value of 0.22 to 0.46 and 0.42 to 0.51 for commercial and overall crop sectors, respectively. Thereby, clarifying a clear message of diversification going on towards commercial crops, at the same time maintaining area under other crops as well, this might be due to increased cropping intensity and other such factors.