Transforming Indian Agriculture

Agriculture is an important sector of the Indian economy. Covering 11.24% of the world’s arable land area and 4% of the world’s renewable water resources, India produces sufficient food, feed and fibre to sustain about 18% (1.38 billion) of the world’s population (as of 2020). Over the last few decades (1980/81–2019/20), the sector has registered an average annual growth of 3.2%—almost double the population growth of 1.7% per annum during the same period. As a result, it has turned India from a food deficit country to one with a net trade surplus of 3.7% of agri-gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018–19. Agriculture contributes about 16.5% to the country’s overall GDP, and employs nearly 42.3% of the country’s workforce (2019/–20), with an average holding size of just 1.08 hectares (2015/16). This chapter dwells on how Indian agriculture was structurally transformed over the long run and the role of technologies, investments and institutions and policies in this transformation. In the light of this, a moot question addressed in this paper is: can India remain a food surplus nation by 2030, especially in the wake of emerging challenges of sustainability, climate change, urbanisation, etc.? The chapter ends on a positive note that with emerging innovations across food value chains, India can remain largely self-reliant in food—with the possibility of some net surpluses—and can also graduate to more nutritious diets, provided agriculture policy is not only crop-neutral but also neutral between consumers and producers.