Agriculture in Madhya Pradesh - An Overview :

Agriculture, in a real sense, has been the life-line for Madhya Pradesh. Some years ago when college students wrote an essay on the state they began with the sentence ‘ Madhya Pradesh is an agricultural state. Three-fourth of the population here is dependent on agriculture or agro related activities for its livelihood and it is this uniformity that keeps society threaded together. But that initial line will certainly not be a true representation of the state’s status in the present condition.

Madhya Pradesh, with its large area, enjoys diverse climatic and soil conditions suitable for a broad range of agricultural products. Agriculture sector in Madhya Pradesh forms the backbone of its economy. It contributes almost one-fourth of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) and is the main source of employment for over 65 percent of the population and constitutes about 60- 75 percent of the rural income.

The state is a large producer of soybean and wheat. Sharbati variety of famous wheat is grown in Sehore, Vidisha and Ashok Nagar districts, and in some parts of Bhopal and Hoshangabad.Madhya Pradesh leads in the production of gram, linseed, green pea, garlic and coriander. The state is also a major producer of linseed, mustard, sunflower and safflower. Agro-climatic diversity and topographical variations enable the state to grow a wide range of cereals, pulses, oilseeds and cash crops, besides being home to myriad varieties of plant species, both in forest areas and outside. Various tropical fruits and vegetables and spices like coriander, chili and garlic are also widely grown. Areas under cultivation of safflower and sunflower are also expanding.

In the last forty years the food production in Madhya Pradesh is constantly falling within the total production. Whereas the food production in 1960-61 was 63.6 % of the total farm produce, it has come down to 48.4 % at present. During the same period non-food products have gone up from 14.3% to 27.9%. Within grains there has been a big fall in the production of wheat and maize (bajra). And the production of soya bean that was zero percent in 1960-61 has gone up to 17.6 % of the food crop in 2002-03. The production of cotton has also got reduced.

The production cost of grains, vegetables and fruits has gone up due to the modernization of agriculture in the state. In Madhya Pradesh single cropping has been the norm on a large scale. In the last 30 years soyabean has been imported and adopted from he US and due to this the area under traditional food crops such as Jawar, corn, cotton, traditional oil seeds such as ‘til’, peanuts, aarandi or pulses such as ‘moong’, ‘urhad’, ‘arhar’ etc has gone on dwindling. It is because of this that multiple cropping patterns such as cotton with Jawar, cotton with Arhar, Jawar with Arhar have died out. Cotton production has been reduced from a coverage of 4.2 % of cropped area in M.P. to 2.3 %. This is not just a matter of decreasing production of cotton. It also means that the looms weaving cotton cloth all over the state are coming to a standstill.

To convert farming into a profitable source of livelihood in Madhya Pradesh it was most important to increase irrigation. Therefore it is surprising that in the last 40 years the proportion of irrigated land has been increased from 5 % to just 24 %. 
The Madhya Pradesh government has started giving importance to irrigation in its 10th five year plan. The new budget states that in the context of the extreme dependence of our agricultural economy on the monsoons the importance of developing irrigation is clear. In the 10th five year plan under a variety of projects the irrigation capacity is being increased by 5.80 lac hectares. In the 9th five year plan the irrigated land area had been inceased by 96000 hectares, whereas now the government is fixing a target of 7 lac hectares of additional land to be irrigated. In Madhya Pradesh now 98% of wheat is irrigated, but only 20 % of pulses and 22 % of rice is irrigated. 

To promote organic farming vermin-compost pits are being made under the ISOPOM (Integrated Scheme of OilSeeds, Pulses,Oilpalm and Maize ) scheme. Because of increase in use of chemical fertilizers the cost of farming has also gone up. And since there is uncertainty over the use of  large areas of forest land, around 3.5 lac cattle are at risk. In these circumstances to promote organic farming major changes in policies are required

Today agriculture is no more a simple means of livelihood anymore, but has become a task full of challenge and risk. A survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation on the indebtedness of farmers shows that of the 64 lac farmers in Madhya Pradesh 32 lacs are in debt. On an average each farmer in M.P. is under a debt of Rs.14,128. And because of the bank formalities and the inhuman recovery processes his trust in the government’s financial institutions has gone down. It is worth noting that even today 40 % of the loans in this ‘agricultural state’ are taken by farmers from non-governmental sources.