Assessing the sustainability of vegetable production in India

Vegetable production is an important constituent in Indian agriculture and has a vital role in achieving nutritional security. Factors such as perishability, high value and good yield response to external inputs has led to intensification of vegetable production. Measuring the sustainability of vegetable production and factors influencing it by employing suitable indicators will be helpful in designing of policy instruments and production practices for economically viable and environmentally sustainable production. Thus, the present study was designed to assess the plot level sustainability in Karnataka, a major vegetable growing state in India. Both the economic and environmental sustainability scores were low, proving the existence of ample opportunity to improve the sustainability of the vegetables in the state. Overall composite sustainability indicator for the economic pillar had better accomplishment than the environmental pillar for both the vegetables. The results show that the size of the holding, preference for higher incomes, years of experience in growing vegetables had significant and positive impact on economic sustainability. Flood irrigation decreases the economic sustainability in comparison to rainfed farming system. The low scores of sustainability reflects the crucial role of farmers’ productive decisions, which finally Determine the level of sustainability of each individual farm. Thus, there is room to incentivize producers to modify the way they manage their resources through appropriate policy instruments in order to upgrade their sustainability performance.