Current State of Agriculture and Farming in India

Agriculture plays an important role in the economy of India. It is noted that more than 58 percent of the village people’s life is based on the agriculture. This is because they consider agriculture as their primary means of livelihood. India is one of the largest producer, exporter, and consumers of agricultural products.  Also, India is in the leading position in the production of vegetables and fruits. India is the second largest fruit producer in the world and ranks third in the farm and agricultural outputs. About 10 percent of the country’s exports are agricultural products.

For developing the agriculture India uses several strategies and techniques. Being one of the largest agriculture-based countries India has many rice exporting companies and rice exporters. They export the Indian agricultural products to all other parts of the world.

The current state of agriculture in India

It is expected that the agricultural GDP of India will grow above 4.1 percent to 1.11 trillion in the future. As per the recent estimation, the food grain production of India is expected to be 271.98 MT in the current year. It is estimated that the production of pulses is about 22.14 MT. As a leading rice production country and leading rice exporting country, the exports of basmati rice of India will rise to Rs 22,000 to Rs 22, 500 crores in the 2017-18 year with the volume of 4.09 MT.

India produces different types of agricultural grains such as rice, wheat, cereals; corns etc and export these products to other countries. As per the current state, in this year the wheat production of India will touch a limit of 96.6 MT. Also, comparing to the groundnut production of India in the year 20116-16 of 537, 888 tons will increase to 700,000 tons in the 2016-17 year. This is estimated to be 70 percent increase in the production and this happens due to the good monsoons. Between April 2016 and February 2017, rice exporters in India will export groundnut to 653,240 MT.

The grapes export of India to Europe and China are expected to rise by 10 to 20 percent this year on the back of higher production because of the good monsoon and higher demand. Spices exports from India grew by 9 percent in volume and 5 percent in value year-on-year to 660,975 tons and US$ 1.87 billion respectively, during April-December 2016.

Investments

Some of the major developments and investments in agriculture is as follows,

A bilateral investment agreement is signed by Brazil and India. It aimed at improving the cooperation in the agricultural areas.

India focused on the private equity fund of US-based Zephyr Management. This management invested a private amount on the Bengaluru-based potato seeds.   

A unit of the Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, Mahindra Agri Solutions agreed to purchase about 60 percentage of the stake in OFD for about 36 crores. This will provide the great market to the Indian grapes in Europe and China. It is expected that in future days the agriculture in India will generate better momentum.