Supply Side Constrains in Production of Pulses in India: A Case Study of Lentil

In India, annual production of pulses ranges from 11 Mt to 15 Mt, with yield of about 600 kg/ha. Due to the wide gap between supply and demand, import of pulses has increased from 0.38 Mt in 1993 to 2.82 Mt in 2008. Lentil is an important rabi pulse crop with a production of 0.85-0.95 Mt in India, after gram. The study has used both secondary and primary data collected from on-farm demonstrations and farmers’ fields to examine the ways to enhance the domestic supply of lentil. The study has found that there is a scope of increasing area under lentil during the rabi season, as its cost per hectare is less with higher net returns than the competing crops like wheat, gram and mustard in water-deficit and resource-poor conditions. There are large returns for adoption of disease management (80 per cent increase in net return), and improved small-seeded varieties (about 40 per cent increase in net return) in lentil. The study has found that lentil-based cropping systems are profitable and also have high water productivity, hence are suitable for mostly un-exploited rice-fallows under water-deficit conditions. Even though marketed surplus ratios have increased in recent years, there is a post-harvest loss to the extent of 7 per cent of production which needs to be curtailed to increase overall supply for final consumption. There is a case for larger institutional and policy support for pulse crops, keeping visible effects of pulse crops in increasing yield of subsequent crops in crop rotations.