Agricultural Growth in India: Examining the Post-Green Revolution Transition

India has enjoyed rapid economic growth over the past forty years, GDP per capita (PPP$) accelerating from less than 1% in the 1970s to over 5.8% in the 2000s. As incomes have risen, consumer demand has shifted from staple grains toward higher valued foods, such as horticultural and livestock products. Indian farmers appear to be meeting these new growth opportunities. But as production shifts, questions are being raised about agriculture’s ability to meet the basic food needs of India’s 1.24 billion citizens. Central to these questions has been the waning impact of cereal grain technologies typified by the Green Revolution. Our purpose is to examine the productivity growth implications of farmers’ decisions to diversify production and to assess new sources of growth in Indian agriculture. In doing so, we construct new production and productivity accounts and evaluate total factor productivity (TFP) growth, from 1980 to 2008, at the national, regional, and state levels. Results suggest renewed growth in aggregate TFP growth despite a slowdown in cereal grain yield growth. TFP growth appears to have shifted to the Indian South and West, led by growth in horticultural and livestock products.