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r"— .4,-7 • • ••••••- ••••• THE INDIAN JOUR OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS U. S. DEPARTMENT' OF ht. (Organ of the Indian Society of Agricultural Economics) 1 Vol. XIV JANUARY—MARCH 1959 No. I CONTENTS ARTICLES Agricultural Economic Theory and Policy .R. Bellerby Recent Trends in the Yield of Rice and Wheat in India • • • • • • V; G. Panse Index of Cost of Cultivation .. S. D. Bokil A Statistical Study of the Rainfall Data at the four District Headquarter Stations of the former Bombay State during the period from D. S.Rangez Rao 1931-32 to 1955-56 • • V. N. Panditrao RESEARCH NOTES - Resource Earnings on Farms in Karchana Tehsil of Allahabad District, Estimated from Farm Survey Records _ • • A. Wycliffe Economic AsPects of Fertilization B. Vasanth Kumar Land Mortgage Banking in India • • C. B. Akkad GLEANINGS BOOK REVIEWS (see inside cover) R . 4.00 BOOK REVIEWS Page Bansil, P. C. India's Food Resources and V. M. Jakhade 85 Population Krishnaswamy, S Y. Food Production in India: b. A. Joshi 86 Principles and Problems Dube, S. C. , India's Changing Villages: Victor S. D'Souza 87 . .,••• .Human Factors in Comm- nity Development Desai, N. B. Report on the Administrative S. V. Ramanuirty 90 Survey of the Surat District EDITORIAL BOARD Prof. M. L. Dantwala Joint Editors Dr. M. B. Desai Shri V. M. Jakhade Shri G. B. Kulkarni Dr. G. D. Agrawal, The copyright and all rights of reproduction and translation of articles, book reviews and correspondence published in THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS are reserved by the Society. Application for permission to translate or reproduce any material contained in it should be made to the Honorary Secretary, The Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, 46-48, Esplanade Mansions, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Fort, Bombay-1. THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS Vol. XIV JANUARY—MARCH 1959 I No. I CONTENTS ARTICLES Page Agricultural Economic Theory and Policy •. J. R. BeHerby 1 Recent Trends in the Yield of Rice and Wheat in 11 •• •• • 00 V. G.Panse India .• • • • Index of Cost of Cultivation .• • • • • S. D. Bokil 39 A Statistical Study of the Rainfall Data at the four District Headquarter Stations of the former Bombay State during the period from D. S. Ratzga Rao 1931-32 to 1955-56 • • • • V. N.Panditrao 49 RESEARCH NOTES Resource Earnings on Farms in Karchana Tehsil of Allahabad District, Estimated from Farm Survey Records .. • • • • • • • • • • A. Wycliffe 65 Economic Aspects of Fertilization • • • • B. Vasanth Kumar 68 Land Mortgage Banking in India . • • • • C. B. Akkad 72 GLEANINGS .. 77 BOOK REVIEWS •• •• .• •• 85 CONTENTS Page REVIEWS IN BRIEF .. •• •• •• 92 ADDITIONS TO THE LIBRARY .. • • • • 98 ANNOUNCEMENT NINETEENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE SOCIETY, DECEMBER, 1959. • • • • 107 REPORT OF THE HONORARY SECRETARY AND TREASURER OF THE SOCIETY FOR • THE YEAR ENDING 31ST DECEMBER,1958.. 107 RECENT TRENDS IN THE YIELD OF RICE AND ce, WHEAT IN INDIA* En ge By r- V. G. Vanse INTRODUCTION A few years back the author had examined the trend in crop yields with the help in of official yield statistics for the principal food crops, rice, wheat, jowar and al maize and two important commercial crops, cotton and sugarcane in the five States, to Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bombay and Madras, over the period to 1910-11 to 1945-46 (Panse, 1952). It was then pointed out that the results of any study based on official yield records cannot be considered conclusive in view of the subjective nature of these yield estimates. One serious defect noted in the )n official yield statistics was that they did not fully reflect seasonal variations in :e yield. Thanks to the pioneering work of the Indian Council of Agricultural ty Research in initiating large scale crop cutting surveys by random sampling in the to country since 1943, the situation has improved steadily and at present objective ty estimates of yield determined with a high degree of precision on the basis of crop re cutting are available for the entire area covered by the food crops, rice, wheat, jowar, bajra, etc., Orissa State being the only major exception for rice. The co- ly - ordination of these large scale surveys was transferred to the Crop Survey Wing of the National Sample Survey from 1953, but the pattern of work has continued. unchanged and a reliable series of comparable yield data for rice and wheat extend- ing over 10 years or more for a large portion of the area under these crops in the country has become available for the first time for critical study. In the context of the national Plans, the value of these data and the close bearing of conclusions drawn from their analysis on planning for increased food production need no elaboration. The period chosen for the present analysis is one of 10 years from 1946-47 to 1955-56 and consists of the entire first Five Year Plan period and a corresponding period just preceding it, since the major interest of the analysis is to bring out any changes in crop yields that may have taken place during the plan period as compared to the previous 'control' period. Rice and wheat crops have been chosen for *The bulk of the yield data analysed in the present paper was extracted from the reports and records of crop-cutting surveys of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the Crop Survey Wing of the National Sample Survey. Yield figures for West Bengal were partly available from the Statistical Abstract published by the State Statistical Bureau and were partly supplied by the Director of the Bureau from records. Yield figures for Bombay were obtained partly from the Review of Crop Cutting Experiments publiished by the Government of Bombay in 1950 and were supplied partly by the Statistician of the Agriculture Department of the State. Data on crop acreages were provided by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Govern- ment of India. Rainfall data for the more recent years which were not available in the Season and Crop Reports were supplied for the respective States by Director of Statistics, Assam, Director of Statistical Bureau, West Bengal, Director of Central Bureau of Economics and Statistics, Bihar, Chief Statistician, Agriculture Department, Uttar Pradesh, Statistician, Agriculture Department, Punjab, Statistician, Land Records Department, Madhya Pradesh, Statistician, Agriculture Depart- ment, Bombay, Director of Economics and Statistics, Andhra Pradesh and Director of Statistics, le Madras. The author's sincere thanks are due to these officers and organizations for their co-opera- tion. The author also wishes to acknowledge the painstaking and careful work done by Shrt. M. K. Bose in the compilation and computation of the data and the assistance given by Shri J. S Mami. and Shri 1K. Sharma in the calculations. 12 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS study for the reason that they have been receiving most attention during the plan period. It is also for these crops that maximum amount of yield data, extending over approximately 65 per cent of the area under each crop, are available for the period, as rice and wheat were the first crops to be experimented with, when crop survey work was started by I. C. A. R. The coverage of the yield data used in the present analysis will be clear from table I for rice and table 2 for wheat. The techniques of crop-cutting surveys by which yields are estimated in these areas, with the exception of West Bengal, is described in the L C. A. R. bulletin,'Sample surveys for the estimation of yield of food crops' publish,-2d in 1950 and the under- lying statistical theory by Sukhatme and Panse (1951). The crop-cutting surveys in West Bengal which are the source of the rice data for that state are carried out according to the method developed by the Indian Statistical Institute and differ from the former in certain details such as size and shape of the crop-cutting plot, agency carrying out crop-cutting, etc. (Mahalanobis, 1948). CROP-CUTTING DATA Although crop-cutting surveys are planned to provide district-wise estimates of yield, the data used in the present analysis are division-wise annual yields per acre, the division consisting of compact administrative groups of upto 7 districts each (tables 1 and 2). The divisional yield is a weighted average of district yields, the weight being the area of the crop in the district in the particular year. The division- al yield thus represents regional yield and is determined with an appreciable degree of precision. Sampling errors of annual estimates of divisional yields have usually ranged between 2 to 7 per cent both for wheat and rice; but for individual major districts they have gone up to 10 per cent and occasionally higher. In the more recent years, the scale of sampling per district seems to have been somewhat lower, o wing to the surveys having been extended to several crops, and sampling errors would be correspondingly higher. For the States as they were constituted during the period under consideration, the annual yield was determined with a high degree of precision, the sampling errors being 1.5 per cent or less for Uttar Pradesh and below 3.0 per cent for the other States. All States in India for which annual data for yields based on crop cutting are available for the ten-year period chosen for study are included in the analysis. Punjab and Assam had, however, no crop-cutting surveys in 1946-47. Similarly all divisions in which any appreciable number of crop-cuttings were done annually in one or more districts have been taken into consideration. The districts included under each division are those in which crop cutting was done annually for the ten- year period and whose boundaries have remained unaltered during this period, this being an essential condition for comparability of yields between years.