Food security and crop diversification: Can West Bengal achieve both?

Abstract

The paper tries to estimate the cereal requirement of the population of West Bengal at the end of the 11th Plan period and make State- and district-level estimates of the levels of grain production and yield that are required to permit alternative levels of diversification by releasing alternative amounts of land for noncereal crop production. The paper concludes that the required yield levels are well within the capabilities of regular green revolution technology. Such yields have been achieved regularly in leading rice-growing regions of the State in the past. In order to achieve the yields necessary to ensure food security and release a significant extent of land for diversification, however, growth rates of the rice-yield in West Bengal must rise well above the record of the 1990s and 2000s.