India’s population and economy are booming, increasing the demand for food and fueling inflation. Most of its people are vegetarians and to improve health and nutrition, the country’s government wants to increase the per capita consumption of protein-rich pulses. But domestic production has been static for years, resulting in more imports from around the world, especially from Canada. The Western Producer’s Mary MacArthur recently visited India, talking to farmers, academics and observers of the agricultural scene. She found governments are designing initiatives to boost the long neglected farm sector but programs often conflict and it is a struggle to overcome a weak rural infrastructure, long held practices and the powerful draw of more prosperous cities.
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COIMBATORE, Tamil Nadu – A push by India’s state and national governments to grow pulses as a nitrogen source for the land and a protein source for its people has not caught on with the country’s farmers.
Pulses are not the easiest crop to grow in India, said Dr. P. Santhana Krishnan, liaison officer with Tamil Nadu Agricultural University at Coimbatore.
Lack of irrigation, labour, mechanization and changing weather patterns have helped diminish pulses in many farmers’ eyes.
Last year, India produced 14.6 million tonnes of pulses and imported 3.5 million tonnes. Canada is a leading source of India’s pulse imports.
India’s population is largely vegetarian and the government is looking to high energy pulses as a way to improve the nutrition of its people.
“The government has committed to promote the development and promotion of pulse crops,” said Krishnan.
Yields in India are much lower than in Canada. In Saskatchewan in 2010, the average lentil yield was 1,282 pounds per acre and the pea average was 1,785 lb. per acre.
In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, farmers can grow 700 to 800 lb. per acre of pulses under irrigation. However, only four percent of the farm land is irrigated. In a good year, farmers can grow about 360 lb. per acre on dry land. But if rains are not timely, yields can be as low as 180 lb. per acre.
Considering that 80 percent of India’s farmers own less than two acres, the yield from a poor pulse crop is not enough to pay their bills.
In Tamil Nadu, farmers have pulled out of pulse crops to grow the more lucrative spice tumeric. While it takes 10 months go grow, farmers can make 100,000 rupees ($2,200) per acre from tumeric, compared to the equivalent of $550 for a good crop of pulses.
Pravin Dongre, president of the Indian Pulse Importers Association, said poor revenue works against pulses as does the weather. It seems the weather is always too wet, too cold or too hot for pulses.
Wheat and rice are more resilient and therefore are preferred by farmers. Wheat yields earn farmers three times what a pulse crop can.
“It’s tough to grow pulses. (The farmer would) rather grow something safe,” said Dongre.
Gurbans Sobti, a Canadian trade commissioner based in the northern Punjab city of Chandrigarh, said even wealthier, northern farmers are reluctant to grow pulses or oilseeds. They prefer the safe wheat-rice rotation with the government guaranteeing to buy their crop.
“It is proving difficult for the state and central governments in north India to wean farmers away from the wheat-paddy cycle as government is the buyer at minimum support price,” said Sobti.
Despite the problems, there is a growing demand for pulses in the largely vegetarian country. Even less strict, semi-vegetarian Hindus, or Muslims and Christians rarely eat meat more than twice a week.
“It’s a staple diet for 100 percent of the population,” said Utkarsh Baxi, pulse specialist with importer Glencore Grain.
As India’s economy improves, so does the demand for pulses.
India’s food industry is worth about $181 billion and is expected to reach $318 billion by 2020.
According to a Canadian government report, the growth in the food industry is expected to be driven by three factors:
• The young population (15 to 25 years) is expected to grow 11 percent to 24 million by 2015. Already India’s 1.1 billion population is skewed to youth. More than 50 percent of Indians are younger than 25 years and 65 percent are younger than 35.
• The categories of middle class to rich households are expected to grow from 64 million in 2015 to 100 million in 2020.
• Also, there is a trend to more convenient, processed food. Fewer families are willing to buy sacks of wheat, rice or pulses from the market to grind their own grain and make all their food from scratch. With this expected demand increase, governments in India are pushing for more food self sufficiency. But Dongre believes that remains far off, especially in pulse production.
India consumes about 18 million tonnes of pulses each year, the equivalent of about 15 kg per person. Government officials hope to increase pulse consumption to about 20 kg per person in an attempt to fight malnutrition and improve health.
Dongre believes pulse consumption will double within the next 10 years and with Indian pulse yields not expected to dramatically increase, he estimates it will need to import 10 million tonnes of pulses by 2015, up from the current 3.5 million tonnes.
Food must also be affordable and governments have many programs designed to increase production and control prices. Dongre said such programs are partly to blame for low pulse acres. In India, most crops have a minimum support price that the government guarantees. It encourages production and ensures farmers a base price.
With farms getting smaller as plots are divided among relatives in each successive generation, even minimum support prices can’t make up the cash needed to sustain farmers.
Instead, governments must change rules to allow companies to buy, or consolidate land to improve efficiencies, said Utkarsh, who believes farmers will not adopt new technology until land is consolidated.
“Corporations need to be allowed,” he said.
As farm area shrinks and children move to the city, farming will become less viable. Few children, or their farming families, want to stay in their villages trying to eke out a living when the cities are booming, said Krishnan.
“Even sons of farmers are not going to farm. They want to go into the city and go into computers or engineering,” he said.
To encourage farmers to stay on the land, government programs, like the one at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, try to encourage farmers to adopt precision farming techniques.
Krishnan said their goal is to create clusters of 100 acre co-operatives where farmers can manage their land jointly, adopt good cropping techniques like drip irrigation, best fertilization and seeding techniques and create a large enough land base to buy or rent equipment.
“We want to catch the farmers before they leave,” he said.
These clusters are aimed at lower-producing farmers who are discouraged and disillusioned with agriculture. The university would provide free inputs for the first year and the help of scientists and marketing experts to negotiate higher prices for the product than the minimum support price set by the government.
“We want to give confidence to farmers that with the right techniques and good seed they can stay on the farm and make a living,” he said.
