Agriculture Diversification in Haryana

Abstract

Agriculture diversification plays a vital role in diversifying and commercializing agriculture, adding value to agricultural produce. The consumption patterns are changing towards high value agricultural commodities (such as fruits, vegetables, oils, milk, meat, poultry, eggs and fish) from traditional agriculture and this is driving the process of agricultural diversification in Haryana. The share of agriculture in GDP, changes in the production of milk, trends and growth rates in the production of major crops and crop diversification index (CDI) of various crops like cereal crops (rice, jowar, bajra, maize, wheat, barley), pulses (gram, mash, moong, massar and others), oilseeds (groundnut, sesamum, rapeseed, mustard, linseed etc.) and other commercial crops (sugarcane, cotton, chillies, tobacco) was analyzed through Entropy Index (EI) and Herfindahle Index (HI). The results show that the share of agriculture in Haryana’s GDP is increasing continuously due to crop diversification along the production of milk also.

Keywords: Agriculture diversification, Haryana, Crops, CDI, Growth rate, Milk.