Horticulture beats food grains in production: A look at the rise and challenges ahead

By: Yash Gupte

The production of horticultural crops which consists of fruits, vegetables, spices, medicinal plants and plantation crops in 2021-22 grew by around 2% to 341 million tons from 334 million tons in 2020-21.

The Horticulture crops production continues to be higher than the food grains production in India. The production of food grains is estimated at a record 314.51 million tons which is higher by 3.77 million tons than the production of food grains during 2020-21 but the production of horticulture crops is much higher than the production of food grains. The production of horticultural crops which consists of fruits, vegetables, spices, medicinal plants and plantation crops in 2021-22 grew by around 2 percent to 341 million tons from 334 million tons in 2020-21.

The production of fruits was estimated to be 107.10 million tons compared to 102.48 million tons in 2020-21. Coming back to vegetables, the production of peas registered an exponential rise as the First Advance Estimate (2021-22) had estimated the production of peas at 5680 million tons. This increased to 6076 million tons in the Second Advanced Estimate (2021-22). In fruits, the production of Mango increased from 20,336 million tons according to FAE to 21,011 million tons according to SAE.

Though horticulture only occupies a small portion of the agricultural land, it produced 12.3 tons per hectare as opposed to agriculture's 2.3 tons per hectare in 2018-19. These figures show unequivocally that horticulture is capable of producing goods with a significantly higher value even though it occupies a small portion of the country's agricultural land. According to the Second Advance Estimates (2021-22) of Area and Production of Horticultural Crops, vegetables have the highest share among the horticultural crops as the production was estimated to be 204.61 million tons, compared to. 200.45 million tons in 2020-21.

The chart below compares the production of food grains with the horticultural crops in India.

Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare

The data clearly emphasizes that the horticulture production in India has been higher than the food grain production. India currently stands as the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world, next to China. Government initiatives and programmes like the Mission for Integrated Development Horticulture (MIDH) provides a strong impetus to guarantee the horticulture sector's overall development in the country. The amount of land used for horticulture is steadily increasing because to initiatives like the MIDH that increase public awareness. According to a 2017 study by the Institute for Social and Economic Change, since the National Horticulture Mission programme was introduced, the average family income of horticulture farmers increased from 0.73 lakh to 1.30 lakh per year (an average increase of 78 percent ).

One thing which must be noticed that though there has been no significant increase in the area under cultivation of horticultural crops from 27.48 million hectares to 27.74 million hectares, the production of the crops has been increased from 334.60 million tons in 2020-21 to 341.63 million tons in 2021-22.

Though there was an increase in production of majority of fruits and vegetables, the production of potato and tomato was estimated to decline. The production of potatoes was estimated to be 53.58 million tons in 2021-22 from 56.17 million tons in 2020-21. Also, there was an estimation of decline in the production of Tomatoes from 21.18 million tons in 2020-21 to 20.34 million tons in 2021-22.

Horticultural crops have brought a good fortune for the farmers but there are a few challenges which are still present. Horticulture is far more labor-intensive than the production of food grains because each plant on the farm needs to be cared for by the farmer. Because horticulture's input costs are so much greater than those of agriculture, many farmers find it challenging to switch from agriculture to horticulture. The lack of infrastructure, such as cold-storage facilities, right from the village level makes it challenging for those already engaged in horticulture farming to protect the high-value fruits and vegetables from the weather conditions. These challenges need to be overcome by the use of well-crafted government measures and technologically intensive farming methods.