High selling prices, rains drive farmers to switch from pulses to soybean, cotton

Indian farmers are moving away from pulses towards commercial crops such as cotton and soybean, driven by their high trading prices above minimum support price (MSP) and good monsoon rains.

According to a report by The Indian Express, which cited data from the Union Agriculture Ministry, Indian farmers, up until July 29, had sown 106.18 lakh hectares (lh) of area under pulses, marginally higher than last year’s 103.23 lh area for cultivation.

However, while the overall picture suggests that pulse cultivation is going up, a state-wise look at acreages and cultivation patterns of individual pulses offer greater clarity into agricultural trends.

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In terms of individual pulses, arhar/tur (pigeon-pea), India’s largest produced kharif pulses crop, has seen cultivation area decline from 41.75 lh to 36.11 lh this year. This decrease, however, has been compensated for by increases in the cultivation areas of other pulses: moong (green gram) has grown from 25.29 lh to 29.26 lh, urad (black gram) from 27.94 lh to 28.01 lh, and other pulses, from 8.24 lh to 12.81 lh.

Further, state-wise data also shows that only three states — namely, Rajasthan (from 21.65 lh to 32.10 lh), Madhya Pradesh (17.83 lh to 18.28 lh), and Uttar Pradesh (6.22 lh to 7.08 lh) — have registered significant increases in cultivation area for pulses. Other states, meanwhile, have seen decreases, with Maharashtra (20.69 lh to 17.81 lh), Karnataka (18.32 lh to 16.94 lh), Telangana (4.11 lh to 2.21 lh), Gujarat (3.80 lh to 2.86 lh), and Odisha (3.08 lh to 2.41 lh) seeing the sharpest declines.

Against the decrease in pulse cultivation areas in several states, soybean cultivation has increased both across states, and overall: the total cultivation area for soybean has increased from 111.89 lh to 114.69 lh this year, with Maharashtra (43.83 lh to 45.62 lh), Rajasthan (9.56 lh to 11.24 lh) and Karnataka (3.78 lh to 4.08 lh) recording the highest growth.

Similarly, pulses have also lost out to cotton in terms of total cultivation area, with cotton cultivation increasing to 117.65 lh this year from 111.69 lh last year at this time.

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The above trends, according to the report, are explained by the difference in trading prices. In Maharashtra’s Latur, for example, Arahar sells for Rs 7,300 per quintal against an MSP of Rs 6,600, soybean goes for Rs 6,300 against an MSP of Rs 4,300, thereby offering greater opportunities for profit.

The per quintal price of raw, unginned cotton or kapas, meanwhile, was Rs 7,500 at the start of the harvesting season, rising to a record Rs 12,000 in March, before settling around the Rs 8,000 mark, far higher than its MSP of Rs 6,080 per quintal (medium-staple variety). Cotton cultivation, which requires more water than pulses or soybean cultivation, has also been helped by good monsoon rains in south, west, and northwest India.

“Normally, I grow urad on 5 acres. But the losses from unseasonal rains at harvesting time during September in the last two years have made me divert my entire urad area to cotton. And why not, when kapas rates are so high?,” Ganesh Nanote, a 30-acre farmer from Nimbora village in Maharashtra’s Akola district, told IE.