Scope and opportunities of agricultural diversification for increasing farmer's income in Bihar

Abstract

Crop diversification in India is generally viewed as a shift from traditionally grown less remunerative crops to more remunerative crops. Bihar is blessed with natural resources, especially water and fertile soil which provide a diversified cropping system. The contribution of agriculture and allied sectors in State's Gross State Value Added (GSVA) is around 20%. Among the sub-sectors, the share of the crop cultivation in GSVA is 9.3% followed by livestock 6.6% in 2020-21. This paper has assessed the diversification scenario of agriculture and horticulture crops in Bihar. to have an understanding of decadal performance. Simpson's Index of Diversification (SID) was used for the estimation of crop diversification in Bihar. On the basis of primary data and secondary data collected from various secondary sources, indicated that the horticulture sector is more diversified as compared to agriculture sector because, share of the rice and wheat to the total area of the agriculture sector estimated to be more than 70% which makes that the rice and wheat farming as a specialized one. The total area under crops during 2000-01 was 7701.09 thousand hectares and SID worked out to be 0.34. During 2019-20 the area under crops was 7296.81 thousand hectares and SID for the same period was estimated to be 0.33. It was clear from the analysis that no significant change has been observed in the diversification index between the two periods in spite of the substantial decrease in area. The highest SID was found during the year 2010-11 and the index value was 0.40. Among the horticultural crops, marginal and small farmers allocate the area in the range of 60-75% for the vegetable crops and 5-7% for fruit crops to the total area under horticulture crops. Through primary survey, the potential crops identified for diversification on the basis of increasing farmer's income were mango, guava, pineapple, litchi, banana, citrus, gingers, turmeric, tomato, brinjal, cabbage, cauliflower and capsicum. High value crops may be given priority in the diversification to reap the benefit of the emerging marketing scenario due to globalization and liberalization.