Trends in Area, Production and Productivity of Food Grain Crops: An Overview

The present study has been undertaken to study the trends in area, production and productivity of food grain in India. The study has been conducted based on secondary data. The data was collected for the periods from 1950–51 to 2012–13 from various governmental publications and web sites. The linear, quadratic and exponential functions are fitted in order to analysis the trend in area, production and productivity of food grains. Quadratic functional form has been fitted for estimating trend due to its higher R² value as compared to the other two forms. Besides these, compound growth rate, coefficient of variation (CV) and instability index are also computed. Similarly, the effects of area, productivity and their interactions towards increasing production are also worked out in the present study. The results of the study reveals that the ‘c’ value in the quadratic functional forms for area, production and productivity are positive and significant for the total food grains in the country more particularly during Phase-I, Phase-II and Phase-III. The growing of food grain crops is not risky as the CV of area, production and productivity of food grain crops are less than 0.322 per cent. The instability indices for area, production and productivity for food grain crops are positive which also indicates less risk in growing food grain crops in future too. The increase in production occurs due to increase in area as well as interactions of area and productivity of food grain crops in the periods under review.