International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—Punjab agriculture dominated by wheat-rice cropping cycle witnessed a quantum jump in agricultural production and productivity as the result of green revolution technology and contributed largely towards ensuring food security to India’s growing population. But overtime, growth and production of crops in the state is on decline due to overexploitation of its natural resources. The state now faces the problem pertaining to sustainability of its agriculture. The present paper evaluates the extent of sustainability of crop production in Punjab. Sustainability has been measured using time trend analysis of Monteith (1990) and inferences of sustainability were drawn from contingency table. Further, geometric growth rates of total area and yields of all major crops were computed using methodology of Oyekale (2012). The results show that even though production of majority of the crops is sustainable but it will not be for very long. From 1966 to 2011, crops like Wheat (0.6%), Cotton (0.4%), Maize (2.1%), Oilseeds (1.9%), Pulses (3.6%), Bajra (4.2%), Barley (4%), Sugarcane (2.3%), Jowar (4.6%) were sustainably cultivated while rice (-1.4%) showed unsustainability. The findings suggest that for sustainability of crop production in Punjab, there is need for crop diversification and shift from input intensive agriculture to sustainable farming so as to conserve natural resources for future food security.

Index Terms—Sustainability, agriculture, sustainability index, crop production.

Varinderpal Kaur is with the Department of Geography, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India (e-mail: varinderpalaulakh@gmail.com).

[PDF]

Cite: Varinderpal Kaur, "Statistical Analysis of Crop Production Sustainability in India: A Micro Level Study," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 191-194, 2017.