Data Journalism
Understanding Uttar Pradesh’s Agricultural (R)Evolution in the Last Decade — One Crop Rules them All
This is what the Area, Production, and Yield Data from 2012–2023 published by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Agricultural Ministry of India say about agriculture in India’s most populous state.
Uttar Pradesh (UP) is India’s most populous state with around 240 million people according to the 2024 population estimates. As the state with the largest area in India’s most fertile Indo-Gangetic Plains, UP is the leading contributor to the national food grain stock as well to the national food security. As per the Government of Uttar Pradesh, approximately 65% of the state population is dependent on agriculture. Using the Area, Production, and Yield Data from the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, I found out what is it that the farmers of UP are growing and how things have progressed in last ten years from 2012 to 2022.
What is APY Data?
The Area Production and Yield Information System (APY) provides information on the area and production of principal crops for all the states of India. I downloaded the data for Uttar Pradesh from their website, did data transformation — wide form to long form — in Python, and finally got the cleaned dataset which is located here. I will be talking about the detailed steps for data extraction, transformation, and cleaning with Python in another post. This dataset contains the seven columns: district, year, crop, season, area, production, and yield.
The data is available for the following crops: Barley, Banana, Onion, Ginger, Gram, Jowar, Sugarcane, Dry chillies, Tobacco, Coriander, Soyabean, Rice, Guar seed, Bajra, Masoor, Groundnut, Linseed, Moong(Green Gram), Peas & beans (Pulses), Sesamum, Sunn hemp, Maize, Small millets, Sweet potato, Wheat, Urad, Arhar/Tur, Cotton(lint), Rapeseed & Mustard, Potato, Turmeric, Sunflower, and Garlic.
As a caution, the dataset doesn’t contain production estimates/data of horticultural crops of the state.
Broad Agricultural Production Insights
The chart above shows that the total production in UP increased by more than 60%. This, however, doesn’t tell us the complete story. We also need to check, which particular crops led to this 60% increment in production.
Sugarcane is the leading contributor to the total agricultural production in the state. If we compute the total percentage of production contributed by sugarcane over the years, we get the chart below.
Approximately, 70% of the total agricultural production in the state across all the years in the last decade can be attributed to sugarcane production. This shows that if the percentage of total production of sugarcane is hovering around 70%, but overall the total production is increasing leaps and bounds, this means that the total production for the rest of the crops must be increasing too.
Computing the change in total production from 2012 to 2022 data for all the crops shows us that the total production increased for some crops during this period, and for some it decreased during the same period. As we are just looking at two time periods, it can be that during this time, a crop’s production may have peaked, but then reduced again. Those cases aren’t shown here.
The highest increment in production is shown by linseed, rapeseed, and mustard. In terms of horticultural crops, the maximum increase is shown by potatoes, and onion. Sugarcane is ranked fifth in this which is also reflected in the chart about total production increment by crops in Uttar Pradesh. The production of sugarcane alone increases from 138M tonnes to approximately 240M tonnes. More than 60 out of 75 districts in Uttar Pradesh have sugarcane as one of the top five produced crops.
The top three contributors to the total agricultural production in the state are sugarcane, wheat, and rice. The third spot sees a fight between potatoes rice yearly. These three crops accounted for around 90% of total production in the state.
However, the balanced diet is not just based on wheat, rice, and sugar. It needs pulses also, and pulses are a major staple of the state. The chart below shows the production of total pulses in the state.
Broad Yield Insights
Most of the farmers in Uttar Pradesh are small land-owners. As such, they want the maximum economic return from the land that they have under the resources constraints they are subjected to. Can that show why there is a preference toward sugarcane? Let us find that out.
The chart shows the top five crops with the highest yield, and one can see that sugarcane has the highest yield and it has a guaranteed price at which the mills need to buy from the farmers called Fair and Remunerative Price. The second and third major crops are bananas and potatoes, both are valuable crops in the horticultural landscape of the state. The reduction in the yield of sweet potatoes, and onion can be a challenging facet in the near future. This is also seen in the lower production of sweet potato in the state because of the decreased yield. Is reducing yield common for all the crops?
The charts show that the growth in the yields are stagnating for oilseeds and pulses, yet the production has increased. What explains that? Let’s find this out later in the analysis. But first, we need to understand about the top three staples: wheat, rice, and potatoes. Do we see an improvement in the yield here?
The yield for wheat and rice seems to be constant, as compared to the improvements in the yield of potatoes. This is also seen in the total production for these three crops. Over the last ten years, the percentage increase in total production for rice and wheat has been only around 17%, whereas the same for potato is 37%.
Thus, overall, one can say that the increment in yield is not comparable enough to the increment in total production. How are we able to achieve more production?
We can either grow on more land, which isn’t true in case of Uttar Pradesh, as it is already highly cultivated. Additionally, the Land Usage Statistics say that the total cultivable area has been stable over the whole decade. The other option is that we are able to grow multiple crops per year on the same land. In UP’s case, it’s the latter that is contributing to the increased production. Due to climate, better irrigation facilities, and better variety of seeds, the total production in the state has increased considerably with the incresaed cropping intensity. Let us understand the acreage under crops a bit more.
Broad Crop Acreage Insights
The total area of Uttar Pradesh is around 24 million hectares, and the gross cultivated area has been around 27 million hectares. However, the net cropped area is around 16 million hectares. This can be achieved only when multiple crops can be grown on the same land, therefore increased cropping intensity.
The maximum amount of area is devoted to sugarcane, rice, and wheat in the state. The highest acreage is devoted to wheat, the second highest to rice, and the third to sugarcane. In many cases, the same land can be used to sow both rice, and wheat, as rice is a monsoon crop, and wheat is a winter crop in the state. Rapeseed and Mustard are two crops with one of the highest growths over the decade. We must also note the total acreage change over the decade for the major crops.
The highest increment is being shown by Rapeseed, Mustards, Onions, and Linseed due to the high economic value of these crops. The negative increment is shown by sunflower, and cotton because of the intense competition from the imported produce in the market for the same.
If we leave sugarcane, rice, and wheat and focus on the other crops, we can see a clearer picture of how the trend for acreage under different crops is evolving. Most of the crops aren’t showing a very high trend except for the one which is Rapeseed and Mustard.
Concluding Remarks and Questions
This analysis showed that overall the agricultural trend show that the productivity is increasing, however, it still leaves some questions unanswered in terms of why farmers are preferring one crop over the other? Why despite having the high yield increments, some crops are not produced as much? Why farmers are less likely to diversify, and moving towards monoculture?
The foundation of an economy and the health of a nation rests on its ability to produce balanced food for its citizens, and as such agriculture should be a high-priority sector for the researchers, as well as the government.
