A dynamic study of breakeven output, yield and land-equivalent for major crops of Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh had been lagging behind in private investment in agriculture since 2000’s. To investigate the reasons for this decline, breakeven analysis coupled with trend analysis was carried out using plot level secondary data from DES, India for the period 2000-01 to 2016-17. Data were for crops were sorghum, cotton, maize, chickpea/gram, black gram, red gram, lentil, rapeseed and mustard, soybean, paddy and wheat crops. The results of the analysis revealed that coefficient of variation for cotton, soybean and black gram was very high which makes them unsuitable for farmers with inadequate means. Lentil was the most stable crop with lowest breakeven land-equivalent which made it suitable for small and marginal farmers. Rice-wheat and cotton-gram cropping pattern was found to be risky as these set of crops had same movement over time. red gram, gram, sorghum, paddy, mustard, soybean and Black gram had horizontal trend of break-even output. Wheat was the only crop with negative trend of breakeven output. Cotton, lentil, and maize had positive trend of breakeven output. Important policy suggestions include adoption of custom hiring of machineries and rigorous yield improvement programmes for paddy, sorghum and maize.