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Pulses production, markets and policies in India

A Amarender Reddy August 27 , 2015

The United Nations has declared 2016 as International Year of Pulses.

Pulses, also known as grain legumes, are a group of 12 crops that includes chickpeas, pigeonpea, urad, moong, lentils, khesari, beans and peas.

They are high in protein, fibre, and various vitamins, provide amino acids, and are hearty crops. They are most popular in developing countries, but are increasingly becoming recognised as an excellent part of a healthy diet throughout the world.

Due to high protein content, pulse crops are one of the most sustainable crops a farmer can grow. It takes just 359 litre of water to produce one kg of pulses, compared with 1,802 for soybeans and 3,071 for groundnut.

They also contribute to soil quality by fixing nitrogen in the soil. Historically India is the largest producer, consumer and importer of pulses. Pulses production in India is about 19 million tonne, every year India is importing about 3-4 million tonne of pulses to meet its annual demand of 22-23 million tonne (Graph 1).

With the population of 1,282 million, as per the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Recommended Dietary Intake (RDI) of 80 gm/capita/day, India needs to produce 36.9 million tonne of pulses. This indicates that there is a deficit of 17.1 MT.

India imports mainly yellow peas in large quantities, while exports premium quality roasted chickpeas in small quantities. Even though there is a significant increase in pulses production in the last decade from 15 million tonne to 18-19 million tonne due to the implementation of National Food Security Mission (NFSM), Accelerated Pulses Production Programme (APPP) and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), there is little improvement in production of kharif (rainy season mainly pigeonpea) pulses. The yields of rabi (post-rainy season mainly chickpeas and lentil) pulses have been significantly improved in recent years. There is a lot of scope in expanding pulses area under rice fallows in eastern and southern India and crop diversification from rice-wheat to cereal-pulse based cropping systems in northern India.

State	Area (1000 ha)	Share in total area (%)	Production (1000 ha)	Share in total production (%)	Yield (kg/ha)
Madhya Pradesh	5310	22	4807	26	905
Maharashtra	3489	14	2565	14	735
Rajasthan	3967	16	2286	13	576
Uttar Pradesh	2365	10	2148	12	908
Andhra Pradesh	1850	8	1468	8	794
Karnataka	2345	10	1286	7	549
Others	4990	21	3674	20	736
All India	24315	100	18234	100	750

There are some isolated success stories like chickpea revolution in Andhra Pradesh and spring moong/urad in irrigated areas, expansion of area under pigeonpea in eastern India in the last decade. However, for effective upscale of these isolated success stories, there is a need for an integrated approach through strengthening NFSM and APPP along with policy prescription to strengthen the entire supply chain from production to procurement and distribution through public-private partnerships.

The two policy instruments, Minimum Support Price and adjustments to tariff rates need to be used judiciously to bridge the gap between demand and supply, provide proper incentive to farmers, increase production at the same time, reduce spikes in open market prices, and safeguard consumers. In the past, there was a lag of implementation of policy decisions resulted large gap between decision taken on import and actual imports reaching to consumers, which is leading to high fluctuations in domestic prices. As the delay in landing of imported pulses and domestic production reaches domestic markets at the same time, which created glut in the markets, eventhough, pulses are in short supply.

Though India is largest producer and consumer of pulses, the yield levels are too low (750 kg/ha), there was a huge yield gap between India and other developed countries and also within India, between research station yield and farmers’ yields. With the introduction of improved varieties, promotion of better management techniques and development of inclusive marketing channels, pulse crops can overcome the lower yields and make good profits to farmers in India.

Source: Department of Economics and Statistics (2015): net imports= imports-exports: total availability= production+ net imports

Further, pulses demand is highly price elastic (consumers demand more pulses if the prices come down) and income elastic (as income increases, consumer demand more pulses), we can reasonably predict that the demand will increase anywhere between 26 to 36 MT in the near future, if prices are reasonably low due to the reduction in the cost of production with the wider adoption of improved technology (as it happened in the case of chickpea during the past decade especially in southern states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka). In fact Alagh Committee on Pulses estimated, the income elasticity of demand of pulses range from 1.5 to 2.0. This would mean that with an increase of around 6.5% annual in per capita income demand for pulses would increase around 10 per cent annually.

Six major states contribute 80% of production

Madhya Pradesh is the largest producer of pulses followed by Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka (Table 1). These six states together contribute 79% of pulses area and 80% of pulses production. The area under chickpea is shifted from north India to south and central India during the last decade.

Some isolated success stories
There are some success stories that have emerged in the last decade in respect of area and yield increase. There is significant progress in chickpea production that increased from 5.6 MT to 8.9 MT, due to the development of high yielding varieties like JG-11, which are drought tolerant and suitable for mechanised cultivation. The yield levels were increased in rabi pulses (chickpeas, lentil) and spring moong/urad compared to kharif pulses (like pigeonpea, kharif moong and urad). The greater challenge is how we can upscale this success in few crops in isolated places (especially for rabi pulses) to other pulses (kharif) and in to new locations. Between 2006 and 2015, urad production increased by 71.8%, chickpeas by 58.6% and moong by 42.4% mostly contributed by rabi season. Now chickpeas contribute about 47% of total pulses production (Table 2).

Crop	Triennium ending 2006	Triennium ending 2014-15	% increase
Pigeonpea	2.48 (18.0)	3.0(15.8)	20.2
Chickpeas	5.6 (40.6)	8.9(47.1)	58.6
Urad	1.02(7.4)	1.8(9.3)	71.8
Moong	0.98(7.1)	1.4(7.4)	42.4
Other Pulses	3.74(27.1)	3.8(20.4)	2.7
Total	13.81(100)	18.9(100)	36.5

Source: Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India: figures in parenthesis % to total pulses production

Distribution of districts based on yield levels (below 0.5t/ha; 0.5 to 1t/ha and more than 1t/ha) is given in Graph 2. It is interesting to see that the districts with more than 1t/ha yield increased from 19% to 66% in case of chickpea. There was significant increase of high productivity districts in case of lentil also from 13% to 18% between 1999 and 2012. Whereas high productivity districts decreased from 37% to 22% for pigeonpea. Percentage of districts with less than 0.5t/ha yield decreased in all crops except in pigeonpea. However, still large number of districts with below 0.5 t/ha category in case of moong and urad. These figures are indicating that the most of the technological development and diffusion concentrated only in chickpea. For all other pulse crops there is a long way to go in spreading the new technology to impact on yields.

Rising imports
India’s exports are exclusively dominated by chickpeas (98.5% of total exports of pulses), while import basket is quite diversified although share of yellow peas (37.9%) is much higher followed by moong/urad (17.8%), lentils (17%), chickpeas (13.7%) and pigeonpeas (13.6%) (Table 3). Chickpeas are mostly exported to Pakistan, Turkey, Algeria, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates. Peas are imported from Canada and Russia; moong/urad are from Myanmar; lentils are from Canada and USA; chickpeas are from Australia and Russia and pigeonpeas are from Myanmar, Tanzania, and Mozambique.

Pulses	Exports (1000 tonnes)	Share in total pulses exports (%)	Imports(1000 tonnes)	Share in total pulses imports (%)
Peas	0.7	0.3	1350.6	37.9
Chickpeas	264.4	98.5	486.9	13.7
Moong/Urad	1.6	0.6	633.5	17.8
Lentils	0.9	0.3	607.5	17.0
Pigeonpeas	0.8	0.3	486.0	13.6
Total	268	100.0	3564.5	100.0

Table 3. India’s Imports and Exports (average of 2012-13 and 2013-14)

Balanced technological and trade policies

Although prices of pulses are consistently higher, the production has not responded to increase in prices in case of pulses (especially in pigeonpea, moong, urad) mainly due to (i) Area stagnation: The main reason for stagnation in area under pulses has been differential impact of technology and relative profitability leading to shifting of area under pulses to more remunerative crops, (ii) Expansion of irrigation. Uncontrolled water flows (flooding) common in canal systems is incompatible with large scale area under pulses, (iii) High risk in productivity and farm income. There is a significant decline in instability of yield of paddy and wheat from the onset of the Green Revolution. Instability in productivity of chickpea remained much higher than of wheat: in pigeonpea, much higher than paddy. Pulses grown under unirrigated rainfed conditions, in marginal lands suffered instability, (iv) there is no major technological breakthroughs in India compared to countries like Canada and others achieving averages of around two tonne per hectare in pulses productivity, (v) Technology breakthroughs in the difficult regions and adverse farming conditions (rainfed regions, the ghats and hill regions) was just not there on a large scale. (vi) Scattered and thin distribution of various types of pulse crops cultivated mostly on marginal lands, with each crop contributing a small share in total pulses area – the biggest hurdle for all stakeholders (researchers/ extension/ development/ credit/ market support agencies in both the public and private sectors) to provide input and output services and other institutional support; (vii) Indeterminate plant type of pulse crops with low yield potential and low response to input management. (v) Near stagnation in yield and technology and hence profitability of pulse crops relative to other competing crops (vi) High frequency of crop failure and yield instability due to pests and diseases and drought and floods (vii) Low priority by policy-makers due to marginal importance of pulses at local level to have significant impact on farmer’s income.

As a result, area under paddy and wheat increased in high–productive zones along with high doses of inputs like fertiliser and pesticides and pulse crops shifted to marginalised lands with little inputs even though prices are high. Still more than 90% of the pulses growing districts are with less than 1 t/ha yield, although production risk is reduced slightly in recent years due to the development of abiotic and biotic tress tolerant varieties.

Policies to increase pulses production
Apart from enhanced availability of newly released seeds of high yielding varieties recommended by ICAR, the strong field level extension, government procurement at enhanced minimum support prices in case of glut in markets and effective government programmes like NFSM, APPP and RKVY have helped in enhancing pulses production especially in a few packets in the country. These initial grains need to be upscaled and outscaled through appropriate technology support, favourable government policies and remunerative price backed by effective supply chain management. With this, India can reduce or eliminate the projected deficit.

(The author is principal scientist [agricultural economics], Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He can be contacted at amarender@iari.res.in)

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