Performance of Pulses in Gujarat : A District level Assessment More

A research was conducted to assess the performance of pulses in one of the most important agriculture states of India. Performance of pulse crops was judged on two important parameters i.e. growth and instability. Compound growth rate was estimated by fitting non linear model to the area, production and productivity data for the period from 1970-71 to 2011-12. The fitted model was analyzed using Marquardt algorithm. Instability was assessed by employing Cuddy-Della Valle instability index. The results show that, the production of pulsesincreased in the state during the entire study period. The increase in pulse crops in the state was due to area expansion coupled with marginal improvement in yield up to the year 1990 after that, increase in production was mainly from improvement in the yield of pulse crops as area was stagnated. Area under pulse crops increased consistently up to year 1990 afterwards it was stagnated. Consistent improvement in the yield of pulses was a notable feature which shows that improved technology has payoff in the state. High growth in area, production and yield of pulse crops was associated with high level of instability during first sub period. Yield variability in pulse crops was relatively higher than area variations which clearly indicated that yield instability was a major source of variation in the production of pulses. Therefore attempt should be made to stabilize the yield level in pulse crops. Article history Received: 07 July 2017 Accepted: 28 March 2018


introduction
Pulses are versatile crops that are better for nutritional security and soil health.It is long established fact that, pulses are important part of daily diets, particularly in Asian continent.However, there has been a reduction in the consumption of pulses over the past decade.For that reason, UN declared 2016 as the international year of pulses to rekindle interest and knowledge on pulses and bring them back in to our diets 1 .India happens to be the major producer, consumer and importer of pulses 2 ; Pulses are a chief source of protein for a massive section of Indian particularly for the poor and most of the conventionally vegetarian population 17 .India accounts for 33% of the world area and 22% of the world production of pulses.Pigeon pea (Cajanuscajan), chickpea (Cicerarietinum), black gram (Vignamungo), green gram (Vignaradiata), lentils and peas are major pulses cultivated in India.About 90% of the global pigeonpea, 65% of chickpea and 37% of lentil area falls in India, corresponding to 93%, 68% and 32% of the global production, respectively 9 .
In India, pulses are grown nationwide.During the year 2014-15, total domestic production of pulses in India was 17.15 million tonnes.India imported 4.58 million tonnes of pulses and expor ted 0.22 million tonnes to rest of the world.During same period, total availability of pulses for domestic consumption was 21.51 million tones 3 .The most important pulse producing states in India are Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh etc. Indians utilize around 30 per cent of the world's pulses, but domestic production of pulses which become stagnated in recent time has not kept pace with population growth.The net availability of pulses has dropped from 60.70 g per day per person in 1951 to 43.30 g per day per person in 2013 as against recommendation of65 g per day per person by Indian council of Medical Research 4 .Import of pulses in India has increased, it currently accounts for about 15-20 per cent of total domestic availability.Canada, Myanmar, Australia and Tanzania are the foremost exporters of pulses to India.
The growth of pulses has always been unenthusiastic in spite of the remarkable growth of Indian agriculture.The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperation has focused on improving pulse production through various programme like Technology Mission (1986), National Pulse Development Project (1990-91), Integrated scheme of Oilseeds, Pulses, Oil palm and Maize (2004), National Food Security Mission (2007-08) and A3P i.e.Accelerated Pulses Production Programme but supply always stay behind the demand and country has to greatly relied on imports to meet up the supply-demand gap.
Performance of Pulsesin major states have become stagnated and minor pulse producing states have real potential in pulse development programme as yield of pulse crops in these minor states was higher than the national average 25 .These states might bring real breakthrough in pulse production in India by which we can reduce import dependency, stabilize the prices of pulses, reduce food inflation and save valuable foreign currency.Gujarat is recognized as one of the minor pulse producing states 25 .This state is having potential to contribute in pulse production at national level.Inrecent times, the state has achieved spectacular growth in agriculture sector including pulses among all Indian states 11 .Hence his research was undertaken to study the performance of pulses at state and district level.Similarly, study also aims to identify the major districts, which have recorded sustainable growth with stability in its yield.

Data
Districts are the lowest administrative unit at which reliable agricultural data is available in Gujarat hence performance of pulses was analysed at district level along with state.Secondary time seies data of area, production and yield (APY) were collected from various sources.viz; Season and Crop Reports, Department of Economics and Statistics (DES), Government of Gujarat, online data bank of International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics 26 and Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) data bank [www.epwrfits.in].The data were collected for the years from 1970-71 to 2011-12.The CGR and instability were estimated for overall period i.e. 1971-72 to 2011-12 and two sub-periods.These sub-periods approximately represents phase of green revolution and post-green revolution.The period-I starts from the year 1971-72 to 1989-90, which represent a period of green revaluation.Second period (Period-II) starts from the year 1991-92 to 2011-12.This period was known as post green revolution period in which we have seen wider dissemination of technology 5 .

Analytical tools Growth
The growth rateswere estimated based on its fit using non linear models, especially, the exponential model.The exponential model is more commonly used in econometric analysis.Usually, the compound growth rates were estimated after converting the growth model to semi-log form and estimated through Ordinary Least Square (OLS) technique assuming multiplicative error term.
Where, ln (Y t ) is the natural logarithm of time series data for area / production / yield for year t, b 0 is the constant term, t is the time trends for years of interest, e t is the error term and b 1 is growth rate for the period under consideration (i.e.slope coefficient).
Then, Compound growth rate was calculated using following equation But, this method have several problems including the difficulty in estimating standard error of estimates of original parameters 18 .Thus, a non-linear estimation technique for solving exponential model assuming additive error terms were employed to estimate the compound growth rates.
Where, Y t is the time series data for area / production / yield for year t, t is the time trends for years of interest, e t is the error term and CGR is compound growth rate for the period under consideration The data were smoothened with the help of three year central moving average techniques to remove bias from the data if any induced by the outliers [Sawant, 1983

Growth
The annual compound growth rate (CGR) in area of pulse crops was 3.91, -0.84 and 0.76 per cent per annum during two sub-periods and overall period at state level, respectively (Table 1).It was statistically significant at 1 per cent level of significance.This shows that, maximum growth in area of pulse crops has been occurred during first period (1971-1990).During second period, area under pulse crops was decreased.Yield of pulse crops has shown positive and significant trend in all the three period of study but maximum growth was observed during first period.The CGR of yield during two sub-periods and overall period was 2.57, 1.71 and 1.44 per cent, respectively.The positive growth in area and yield during first period leads significant high positive growth in production of pulse crops i.e. 5.48 per cent per annum.Positive and significant trend in production of pulse crops was also seen in overall period.During this period CGR of production was medium (1.77 per cent per annum).Only one district i.e.Jamnagar has registered high (More than 3 per cent) CGR in yield of pulse crops in overall period.Rest of the districts has seen low to medium (Between 0 to 3 per cent) level of CGR in yield of pulse crops.During overall period, production of pulse crops was seen high in Amreli, Jamnagar, Junagadh, Panchmahal, Rajkot and Surendranagar districts where magnitude of CGR was greater than 3 per cent per annum.During first sub period, area expansion coupled with yield improvement was a reason for increase in production of pulse crops in the state but during second period, increase in production was mainly comes from improvement in the yield of pulse crops.Results of decomposition analysis reported by More et al., 2015 also stated that, improvement in yield of pulse crops was the main reason behind the increase in production followed by interaction of yield in to area which supports our view.
instability State and district level estimates of instability in regards to area, production and yield of pulse crops for three periods viz; 1971-1990, 1991-2012 and  1971-2012 were presented in table 2 and figure 1.In Gujarat state, instability in area of pulse crops during the study periods was 13.42, 9.08 and 17.31 per cent per annum, respectively.Area under pulse crops in the state was relatively stable in second sub-period compared to first.Similarly, production and yield of pulse crops was also stable in second sub-period compared to first sub-period.Instability in production of pulse crops was reduced to 22.65 percent from 35.90 per cent in sub-sequent periods.Instability in yield was also decreased to 16.93 per cent from 25.72 percent.Yield variability in pulse crops was relatively higher than area variations which again clearly indicated that, yield variation was a major source of variation in production of pulsecrops in the state.A study by Mehta (2013)  alsomentionedsimilar resultson the yield of pulse crops being mostly unstable compared to area in the Gujarat state.
District level results shows that, during first subperiod, instability in area of pulse crops was ranged from 6.66 per cent (Valsad) to 104.66 per cent (Jamnagar) and during second sub-period, it was ranged from 6.69 per cent (Vadodara) to 56.10 per cent (Amreli).During first sub-period of study, low level of instability was seen in Valsad, Dang and Surat districts and high level of instability was recorded in Jamnagar, Junagadh, Amreli, Rajkot, Kachchh and Ahmedabad districts.In rest of the districts, instability in area of pulse crop was moderate.
In second sub-period of study, many of the districts except Amreli, Panchmahal, Surat, Kheda, Surendranagar, Valsad, Dang and Bhavnagar showed decrease in the level of area instability in pulse crops which is good sign.Among these districts, maximum increase of instability was seen in Dang and Bhavnagar districts.
It is obvious that, magnitude of production instability of pulse crops was high compared to its area and yield.Such type of results is seen because production is interaction of area and yield series.The production of pulse crops was recorded to increase in Gujarat during entire study period.The increase in pulse crops in the state was due to area expansion coupled with marginal improvement in yield up to the year 1990 after that, increase in production was mainly from improvement in the yield of pulse crops as area was stagnated.Area under pulse crop was increased consistently up to year 1990 afterwards it was stagnated.Consistent improvement in the yield of pulses was a notable feature which shows that improved technology has payoff in the state.High growth in area, production and yield of pulse crops was associated with high level of instability during first sub period.Yield variability in pulse crops was relatively higher than area variations which clearly indicated that yield instability was a major source of variation in the production of pulse crops.Hence efforts should be made to stabilize the yield level in pulse crops.reference Magnitude of CGR in regards to production and yield of pulses was seen higher in first sub-period compared to second sub-period of study.Few districts viz;Amreli, Junagadh, Kachchh and Surendranagar have registered prominent CGR in yield and production during second sub-period.In overall period, all the districts have shown positive trend in production and yield of pulse crops.(Except production of pulse crops in Valsad district).
instabilityThe method that may use to examine instability in a variable over time should satisfy two minimum conditions.First, it should not include deviations in the data series that arise due to secular trend or growth.Second, it should be comparable across the data sets having different means[Mehra, 1981 and  Hazell, 1984].Simple coefficient of variation (CV) overestimates the level of instability in time series data, characterised by the long-term trends.To avoide the problem of overestimation, Cuddy-DellaValle, 1978 ; Mehra, 1981 ; Hazell, 1982 ; and Ray

table 1 : Growth rates of area, production and yield of pulses in various districts of Gujarat Districts Area Production Yield Period-i Period-ii overall Period-i Period-ii overall Period-i Period-ii overall
Note: Period-I: 1970-71 to 1989-90 Period-II: 1990-91 to 2011-12 Overall: 1970-71 to 2011-12 * significant at 5 % **