DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICSUNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES, GKVK, BANGALORE

Name: Vasanth Kumar, C. Major Advisor : Dr. D. Sreenivasa Murthy ID. No. : PALB 3104 Seminar Teachers: Dr. B.V. Chinnapappa ReddyClass: Sr. M.Sc. (Agri.) Dr. G.S. Ananth

Semester: I (2014-15) Date: 11-10-2014Seminar: I Time: 10.15am

Seminar on

Horticulture -The Growth driver of Indian Agriculture: Opportunities and Challenges

Synopsis

The horticulture sector encompasses a wide range of crops namely fruit crops, vegetables crops, potato and tuber crops, ornamental crops, medicinal and aromatic crops, spices and plantation crops. New introductions like mushroom, bamboo and bee keeping (for improving the crop productivity) further expanded the scope of horticulture. While the first few Five Year Plans assigned priority to achieving self-sufficiency in food grain production, over the years, horticulture has emerged as an indispensable part of agriculture, offering a wide range of choices to the farmers for crop diversification. It also provides ample opportunities for sustaining large number of agro-industries which generate substantial employment opportunities. The horticulture sector contributes around 30 per cent of the GDP from about 13.08 per cent of the total area and about 37 per cent of the total exports of agricultural commodities.

India as the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables, largest producer and consumer of cashew nut, tea spices, third largest producer of coconut, fourth largest producer and consumer of rubber and sixth largest producer of coffee in the world. Today, as a result synergy between focused research, technological and policy initiatives, high efficiency inputs, horticulture in India, has become a sustainable and viable venture for the small and marginal farmers. Besides, the sector has also started attracting entrepreneurs for taking up horticulture as a commercial venture. Therefore, there is a great scope for the horticulture industry to grow and flourish.

Status of Indian Horticulture

India is currently producing 280.7 million tonnes of horticulture produce from an area of 24.3 million ha. It constitutes about 13 per cent of world’s fruit production and 15.2 percent of world’s vegetable production. Horticulture sector is prominent segment under agriculture sector as it contributes significant portion of agricultural and nations GDP and it has export potential.

Why horticulture is called as growth driver of Indian agriculture?

Examination of sector wise growth within agriculture and allied sector, horticulture has high growth rate than other segments of agriculture during various growth periods since 1960. The recent growth rate of horticulture of during XIth plan is also substantially higher than other sectors. The production of horticulture exceeded the agriculture production first time

during 2011-12. High growth rate as regards to land productivity in terms returns per hectare also not only ensured income and nutrition security but also resulted in greater crop diversification towards horticulture from agriculture. Nearly 7.27 million ha land was shifted towards horticulture during last two decades from other sectors.

Major Challenges

Under the situations of increasing demand of horticulture products due to growing population, increasing household income and growing sensitivity towards nutritional security, the sustaining the growth achieved in horticulture as well as to achieve the targeted growth rate targets of about 6.0 per cent for XIIth plan is the major challenges of horticulture. Apart from this, the dynamic production problems, volatile marketing conditions and developing technologies for value addition and processing to minimize the post-harvest loss are the other challenging issues facing horticulture.

Opportunities

Still the productivity of many horticulture crops is less than World average and hence harnessing potentials of technologies will be the major opportunity to achieve the higher production and thereby taking the agriculture sector to higher levels. India has 12.86 M.ha of cultivable wasteland and many horticultural crops which have lesser demands on water and other inputs can be used to grow horticultural crops. Presently less than 2 percent of horticultural produce is being processed and there is a tremendous scope to 10 percent. Direct employment for 7.7 million people and indirect employment for 30.0 million is expected in horticulture.

Conclusion

Horticulture sector of late emerges as a prominent segment under agricultural sector by its higher growth and enhanced crop area. Realizing this Government of India has accorded due importance by allocating more funds for horticulture and proposed many programmes including the north eastern states with the objective of increasing the national production and also to ensure higher income, employment and national security to farmers.

References

ANONYMOUS, 2011, Working Group on Horticulture and Plantation Crops for XIIth Plan. Planning commission report.

GAJANANA, T.M., SREENIVASA MURTHY, D AND SUDHA, 2012, Post-harvest Loss in Horticultural Crops, IIHR Report.

MAHENDRA SINGH AND MATHUR, V.C., 2008, Structural Changes in Horticulture Sector in India: Retrospect and prospect for XIIth Five Year plan. Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, 63(3):6-9.

PATIL SHIRISH, S. AND KELKAR TUSHAR, S., Export of Horticultural Products–The Path Ahead. International Journal of Life Sciences, 1 (1): 1-6.

SURABHI MITTAL., 2007, Can Horticulture be a Success Story for India. Indian council for

research on international economic relations, working paper.

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