Agriculture - An area of concern

India may be a long term growth story, but we do have our areas of concern. One such is agriculture. No, i am not going to write on the failure of monsoon, but what is evident if we do some data analysis.

India, with about 160 million hectares under agriculture has the second largest land under agriculture, just behind the United States. This area is larger than the area in Europe or the area in China devoted to this activity. So what is the problem?

Consider the following.
1. Agricultural growth in India has been much slower than our population growth in recent years.
2. Despite being the second largest producer of wheat and rice in the world, our productivity is way behind many countries.
3. With increasing industrialization and urbanization, the land under agriculture will reduce in the coming years.
4. Population in our country is likely to grow by about 30-40 crores in the next 40 years.
5. Population of the world may grow by about 150 crores in the world during the same period.
6. In view of 5 above, do not expect availability of much food through imports.
7. With better standards of living in the country, per capita consumption of food is bound to go up.

Should we worry? I think yes. If we do not improve our yields soon, we may see food problems in the years to come, monsoon or no monsoon.