Tag: tur dal | Vivek Kaul

2 March, 2016

Pulse of the matter

The Economic Survey of 2015-2016 is a lovely document which goes into great detail on what is wrong with India on the economic front and offers good workable solutions to solve these problems.

One of the points that the Survey makes is regarding the Indian agriculture becoming cereal centric. The reason for this lies in the fact that the government procures rice and wheat from the farmers at the minimum support price(MSP). While the government announces an MSP for 23 crops, it largely buys only rice, wheat and some cotton. For sugarcane there is an MSP like engagement where the government fixes prices and the sugar mills are legally obligated to buy sugarcane from the farmers at that price.

As the Survey points out: “In principle MSP exists for most farmers for most crops, it’s realistic impact is quite limited for most farmers in the country. Public procurement at MSP has disproportionately focused on wheat, rice and sugarcane and perhaps even at the expense of other crops such as pulses and oilseeds.”

This has effectively led to a situation where the government has large stocks of rice and wheat much above the buffer stock norms. But it also leads to a situation where there are frequent spikes in the price of pulses. In the recent past the price of tur dal (or pigeon pea) had touched Rs 200 per kg. Elections have been lost in the past on onion prices going up and given this, elections can easily be lost in the future with price of pulses going up.

Importing pulses is really not a solution because India is the number one producer as well a consumer of pulses in the world. As the Survey puts it: “Given that India is the major producer and consumer of pulses, imports cannot be the main source for meeting domestic demand.”

This means that the farmers need to be incentivised to produce pulses and at the same the yields on pulses also need to go up. The question is how can the government incentivise farmers to produce pulses and wean them away from producing rice and wheat.

As the report titled Price Policy for Kharif Crops—The Marketing Season of 2015-2016 points out: “A pertinent question arises as to why farmers are not wholeheartedly diversifying towards oilseeds and pulses. Based on Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices’s interaction with a wide spectrum of farmers and also based on field visits, it emerged that farmers need a backup plan in the form of reasonably strong procurement machinery to be put in place to fall back upon when the prices fall below minimum support price.”

Along these lines, the Economic Survey recommends a “strengthened procurement system” for pulses. And the good part is that the finance minister Arun Jaitley has gone ahead with this suggestion in the budget.

As Jaitley said in his budget speech: “Effective arrangements have been made for pulses procurement… Incentives are being given for enhancement of pulses production. Rs 500 crores under National Food Security Mission has been assigned to pulses.”

Also, the government has plans of creating a buffer stock for pulses like it has for rice and wheat. As Jaitley said during his speech: “A number of measures have been taken to deal with the problem of abrupt increase in prices of pulses. Government has approved creation of buffer stock of pulses through procurement at Minimum Support Price and at market price through Price Stabilisation Fund. This Fund has been provided with a corpus of Rs 900 crore to support market interventions.”

Given the current structure of the agricultural economy these are steps in the right direction. With the government buying more pulses at the minimum support price, it will incentivise more farmers to grow them, improving the total production of pulses. This is very important given that pulses are a huge source of protein for vegetarians.

The other big problem with pulses is that most of it is grown on unirrigated land. As the Economic Survey points out: “In contrast, a large share of output in wheat, rice and sugarcane – in Punjab, Haryana and UP – is from irrigated land. In water scarce Maharashtra, all sugarcane is grown on irrigated land.

Meeting the high and growing demand for pulses in the country will require large increases in pulses production on irrigated land, but this will not occur if agriculture policies continue to focus largely on cereals and sugarcane.” A better procurement policy for pulses will help in increasing production.

Further, pulses have a low yield. In fact, the yield in India is lower than other key pulse producing countries like Brazil, Myanmar and Nigeria, which have better yields than that in India. Madhya Pradesh which is the main state producing pulses, has a yield of 938 kg per hectare. In comparison, China has yield of 1550 kg per hectare.

What has not helped is the fact that the yield has more or less remained flat. In 2007-2008, 826 kg of tur dal was produced per hectare. By 2013-2014, this number had risen to only 859 kg per hectare, at a rate of less than 1% per year (around 0.7% to be precise).

As Dharmakirti Joshi and Dipti Deshpande economists at Crisil Research point out in a research note titled Every third year, pulses catch price-fire: “Pulses account for about 20% of area under foodgrain production, but less than 10% of foodgrain output. Also, over time, production of pulses has failed to catch up with demand. Output has grown less than 2% average in the last 20 years, while acreage has grown even lesser at 0.8%. Not surprisingly, yield rose only 0.9%.”

In order to improve yields, either more pulses need to be grown under irrigated areas, or the unirrigated areas need access to irrigation. The second option will take a lot of time to achieve. Given this, it is important that farming of pulses is encouraged in areas which have access to irrigation. And that is precisely what Jaitley has tried to do with this budget.

There may be lot that is wrong with Jaitley’s budget, but he has got it right when it comes to pulses.
(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

The column originally appeared in The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle on March 2, 2016

1 December, 2015

Why high dal prices are not enough to increase production

In response to yesterday’s column a reader on the social media concluded that it is obvious that farmers should grow tur dal which is priced at Rs 200 per kg, in comparison to sugar which is selling at a much lower price. He further said that businesses which tend to enjoy pricing power tend to do well.

Only if it were as simple as that. This is the classic, interest rate cut will lead to increased consumption, kind of economic theory—it doesn’t always work. In fact, in order to encourage farmers to plant more dal (pulses) the government in early November announced a significant increase in the minimum support price of gram and masur dal.

The minimum support price of gram was increased by Rs 250 to Rs 3425 per quintal (i.e. 100 kgs). The minimum support price of masur was increased by Rs 250 to Rs 3325 per quintal. Over and above this, a bonus of Rs 75 per quintal has also been announced.

Does this increase in minimum support price and a bonus to top it, mean that farmers will now automatically plant more dal in the rabi season, which is currently on. The government clearly thinks so. As the press release announcing the increase in minimum support prices (MSPs) pointed out: “The higher MSPs would increase investment and production through assured remunerative prices to farmers.”

In a world of lower interest rates leading to increased consumption kind of economics, this would have made perfect sense. The trouble is do farmers know about the government offering a minimum support price on dal? The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), a part of the ministry of agriculture, suggests otherwise.

As the report titled Price Policy for Kharif Crops—The Marketing Season of 2015-2016 points out: “Two most important procurement agencies of the Government of India namely Food Corporation of India (FCI) and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Limited (Nafed) were set up with the main objectives of procuring notified commodities at MSP, if and when the market prices go below MSP. These agencies have been in the existence for over 50 years and 30 years respectively. Yet, the benefits of MSP bypass a large section of farmers, rendering the pricing policy and procurement operations ineffective. As per Situation Assessment Survey (NSS 70th Round), only 2.57 million households were benefitted directly from procurement of paddy during 2012. The procurement of oilseeds and pulses is far worse.”

So the question is do the farmers know about these price signals being sent out by the government? And the answer is no. In fact, as can be seen from the accompanying table in 2014-2015, the Nafed barely picked up any tur, moong or urad dal.

Table: Procurement of Pulses by Nafed.

Nafed picked up 1543 tonnes of tur dal in 2014-2015. The total production of tur dal in 2014-2015 was around 2.78 million tonnes. The total production in 2013-2014 had stood at 3.34 million tonnes. What this tells us is that unlike rice and wheat, the government agencies are picking up very little of dal directly from the farmers at the minimum support price.

The fact that the government picks up rice and wheat and does not pick up dal has distorted the entire production process of dal. What does not help is that the average farmer has faced losses.

As a recent news-report in The Economic Times points out: “According to an analysis done by the scientists of the Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth (Agricultural University), Rahuri, farmers who grew tur in 2014, suffered losses of 12.7 per cent.”

The news-report then goes on to suggest that most farmers had to sell the tur dal they had produced at below MSP in 2013 and 2012. And this explains why the production of tur dal fell from 3.34 million tonnes in 2013-2014 to 2.78 million tonnes in 2014-2015. What this also tells us is that high prices are not leading to increased gains for farmers, and it is the middle men who are gaining the most.

Imports are not a solution because the global market for dal is very thin. As the report titled Price Policy for Rabi Crops—The Marketing Season of 2016-2017 points out: “As per Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the total global production of pulses was 72.3 million tonnes in 2013, out of which about 19% is traded. India is the largest producer of pulses in the world with a share of 24.3 percent…India is the largest importer with a share of 27.3%.”

In fact, India’s import of pulses has gone up dramatically from 13.4 lakh tonnes in 2004-2005 to around 45.7 lakh tonnes in 2014-2015. Further any more jumps in imports will only lead to an increase in prices of dal. So what is the way out?

The farmers first and foremost need to be aware that there is something known as a minimum support price. As the report titled Price Policy for Kharif Crops—The Marketing Season of 2015-2016 points out: “This calls for giving wide publicity about MSP and procurement agencies on radios, television and vernacular languages in popular local dailies, at least 15 days before the start of procurement operations so as to reach farmers far and wide.”

Second, given that state agencies are procuring rice and wheat, they need to procure dal as well, in order to balance things out. As the report titled Price Policy for Kharif Crops—The Marketing Season of 2015-2016 points out: “A pertinent question arises as to why farmers are not wholeheartedly diversifying towards oilseeds and pulses. Based on CACP’s interaction with a wide spectrum of farmers and also based on field visits, it emerged that farmers need a backup plan in the form of reasonably strong procurement machinery to be put in place to fall back upon when the prices fall below minimum support price.”

As the press release announcing an increase in the minimum support price of Rabi crops pointed out: “The Cabinet also directed that in order to strengthen the procurement mechanism for pulses and oilseeds, Food Corporation of India (FCI) will be the Central Nodal Agency for procurement of pulses and oilseeds.”

Let’s see how much impact this move has. In an ideal world, the market should do its own thing, but in this case government intervention seems to be the best way out, at least in the short-term.

(The column originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning on Dec 1, 2015)

30 November, 2015

Why India should be growing dal and not sugarcane

Dal prices, in particular tur dal (also known as arhar dal or pigeon pea) prices, have been on fire. The price of tur dal even crossed Rs 200 per kg sometime back. As I write this, the price of tur dal is still hovering around Rs 200 per kg.

This trend has prevailed over the last few years where dal prices have reached astonishingly high levels at various points of time. Why is that the case? The reasons are both from the demand as well as supply side.

As rural incomes have gone up over the last few years, the demand for dal as a source of protein has gone up. The supply hasn’t been able to keep pace. Over and above this, short term weather trends have led to massive spikes in dal prices.

In 2007-2008, India produced 3.08 million tonnes of tur dal. In 2014-2015, the total production was down to around 2.78 million tonnes, which was lower than the production in 2007-2008. The total production in 2013-2014 had stood at 3.34 million tonnes.

Hence, between 2013-2014 and 2014-2015, there was a significant fall in production of tur dal. Economists Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini in a column in The Indian Express estimate that the “the consumption of tur hovers between 3.3 to four million tonnes.” Hence, there is a clear gap between the demand for and the supply of tur dal.

As Dharmakirti Joshi and Dipti Deshpande economists at Crisil Research point out in a recent research note titled Every third year, pulses catch price-fire: “Pulses account for about 20% of area under foodgrain production, but less than 10% of foodgrain output. Also, over time, production of pulses has failed to catch up with demand. Output has grown less than 2% average in the last 20 years, while acreage has grown even lesser at 0.8%. Not surprisingly, yield rose only 0.9%.”

There are fundamental reasons behind why tur dal prices in particular and dal prices in general have been on fire. Over and above this there is a more recent reason as well. The monsoon this year was at 86% of its long period average. And this did not help either. As Joshi and Deshpande point out: “Pulses are highly risk-prone crops because most of the production is rain-dependent. Barely 16% of total pulses area is covered by irrigation and hence the crop is highly vulnerable to monsoon shocks.”

Also, the current incentive structure of the government is in favour of growing rice, wheat and sugarcane. As Gulati and Saini point out: “The government needs to create a crop-neutral incentive structure for farmers, which is at present skewed in favour of rice, wheat and sugarcane. Much of the subsidies on fertilisers, power, and irrigation go to these crops. These subsidies amount to more than Rs 10,000/ hectare. If the same amount were given to pulse growers, they would be incentivised to produce more.”

The government declares a minimum support price for rice and wheat and actively procures grains through the Food Corporation of India and other agencies.

It declares a minimum support prices for dal as well, but doesn’t actively procure it. Given this, while the farmer is sure of the government buying the rice and wheat that he produces at a certain time, the same certainty doesn’t exist in case of dal. As Joshi and Deshpande point out: “Production is also risky because of inadequate post-harvest storage facilities, absence of assured marketing outlets (unlike wheat and rice) and lack of government assurance for purchase under public distribution.”

The irony is that with economic incentives like assured procurement by the government lead to the farmers producing water intensive crops in water-scarce areas. As TN Ninan writes in The Turn of the Tortoise—The Challenge and Promise of India’s Future: “Punjab and Haryana need to change their choice of crops and reduce growing water-hungry rice…Growing sugar cane, even more water hungry than paddy, in water-scarce Maharashtra is equally contraindicated—especially since the country happens to be surplus in sugar most of the time, and exporting sugar amounts to exporting water.”

As Ninan further points out: “The high cane prices make the crop attractive to farmers who otherwise might have grown less water-intensive crops, especially in stretches where water is not abundant. But one price distortion leads to another, and then another.”

With this entire structure in place enough dal doesn’t get grown. As Gulati and Saini point out in another column in The Financial Express: “Pulses need much less water, are nitrogen-fixing, and therefore do not need much chemical fertilisers either. They can thus save on large input subsidies (power, irrigation and fertilisers), much of which are normally cornered by rice, wheat and sugarcane as these crops have high irrigation cover and higher fertiliser consumption.”

So even though growing dal needs lesser water not enough dal is grown because the prevailing economic incentives go against it. And this anomaly is not going to go away anytime soon.

The column originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning on Nov 30, 2015

28 October, 2015

Elections with tur dal tadka

Dal prices have been on fire. The bureaucrats and politicians have been caught napping once again. In the recent past, tur dal prices have crossed Rs 200 per kg. The prices of other major pulses have also crossed more than Rs 100 per kg.

The governments (central as well as state governments) have gone on an overdrive and blamed the hoarders for the price rise, as they have often done since the 1960s. A statement released by the ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution late last week pointed out that 74,846.359 tonnes of pulses have been seized from hoarders after 6,077 raids.

It is not surprising that the central government wants to push down the price of various pulses in general and tur dal in particular, given the on-going state assembly elections in Bihar. Media reports suggest that the high dal prices have become an election issue in Bihar, with leaders of both the NDA and the Nitish+Lalu+Congress combine accusing each other of not doing enough to control dal prices.

But is hoarding the really the only reason for high prices? The ministry of agriculture publishes a document titled Commodity Profile for Pulses. This document dated March 2015 had clearly pointed out that the total production of various kinds of dal would fall by 6.8% to 18.43 million tonnes in 2014-2015. The production had stood at 19.78 million tonnes in 2013-2014.

The production of tur dal was expected to be at 2.75 million tonnes, a fall of 13.2%. The production for 2013-2014 had stood at 3.17 million tonnes.

The Commodity Profile for Pulses dated September 2015, revised these numbers. The total production of dal was revised to 17.2 million tonnes, a fall of 13% from 2013-2014. The production of tur dal was revised to 2.78 million tonnes, a fall of 12.3% from 2013-2014.

The point here is that the government knew at the beginning of this financial year that the production of tur dal in particular and total dal production as a whole, had fallen in 2014-2015. It was but logical that hoarders would get into the fray.

This possibility should have been tackled at that point of time. By the time the government woke up to this possibility it was too little and too late. The damage of escalating dal prices had already been done.

Further, imports have been bandied around as a solution to the escalating prices. In a press release dated October 19, 2015, the ministry of consumer prices, food and public distribution stated that the “government would further import 2000 tonnes of Tur dal and 1000 tonnes of Urad dal and tender will be floated by MMTC immediately.”

As mentioned earlier the production of tur dal has fallen from 3.17 million tonnes in 2013-2014 to 2.78 million tonnes in 2014-2015. Also, a poor monsoon this year may also have had an impact on tur production. Tur is mainly grow during the kharif season and a very small portion of the total area under production has access to irrigation. The monsoon this year was at 86% of its long period average.

So what does this mean? The production of tur dal during the course of 2014-2015 was around 0.4 million tonnes lower than 2013-2014. In an article in The Indian Express Professor Ashok Gulati of ICRIER estimates that the yearly consumption of tur dal in India is in the region of 3.3 to 4 million tonnes. Trying to plug this huge gap between falling production and consumption by importing a few thousand tonnes of tur dal is not going to help much.

In fact, the global market for pulses is not very big. In 2014-2015, India imported a total of 4.6 million tonnes of dal, of which 0.58 million tonnes was tur dal. A little over half of India’s tur dal imports came from neighbouring Myanmar and the remaining came from Africa. Also, it is worth mentioning here that India is the biggest producer of tur dal in the world. So imports really cannot help beyond a point.

Further, pulses are an important source of proteins especially for vegetarians. In this scenario as per capita income goes up, the demand for pulses will continue to go up.

As the 2013-2014 annual report of ministry of consumption, food and public distribution points out: “demand for pulses has been increasing steadily mainly due to increase in population and preference for enhanced protein requirements in food.”

A discussion paper titled Taming Food Inflation in India released by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) in April 2013 and authored by Ashok Gulati and Shweta Gulati refers to the same reason. As it points out: “[The] study finds that the pressure on prices is more on protein foods (pulses, milk and milk products, eggs, fish and meat) as well as fruits and vegetables, than on cereals and edible oils, especially during 2004-05 to December 2012. This normally happens with rising incomes, when people switch from cereal based diets to more protein based diets.”

This trend of increased consumption of proteins has been around for a while. What all this clearly tells us is that the government failed to see this crisis coming, even though the data as well as the trend suggested it very clearly.

Further, the trend of increased protein consumption will continue, as people earn more and eat better. This can be only solved by producing more pulses within the country.

The government of India actively procures wheat and rice through the Food Corporation of India and other agencies. This creates its own set of problems. As the CACP report points out “Assured procurement gives an incentive for farmers to produce cereals rather than diversify the production-basket.”

The economic incentive the way it is currently structured encourages farmers to produce more of rice and wheat and not other crops. This is something that needs to be set right.

In the short run, the good news is that the area on which pulses have been sown in this kharif season has gone up to 11.6 million hectares from 10.3 million hectares last year.

As far as tur dal is concerned the area under production has gone up by 4% to 3.74 million hectares. While the number is higher in comparison to 2014-2015, it is not as high as earlier years. Between 2010-2011 and 2013-2014, the number varied between 4.42 million hectares and 3.90 million hectares. The yield in 2010-2011 was 655 kg per hectare. This had jumped to 813 kg per hectare in 2013-2014.

With an increase in area under production, prices are likely to fall a bit in the days to come. Nevertheless, if dal prices in general and tur dal prices in particular, need to come down dramatically in the years to come, then the yield as well as area under cultivation need to go up. And this is easier said than done.

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He can be reached at [email protected])

The column originally appeared in The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle on October 28, 2015

28 October, 2015

‘Dal’onomics 101: Why dal prices have been going up

Toor_Dal_Tur_dal

One of the first things that gets taught in any basic course on economics (or Economics 101) is the substitution effect. This is a scenario where high prices of one commodity pushes consumers into consuming another commodity. If lamb meat prices are too high, consumers move to eating chicken. If coffee prices go up, consumers may move towards drinking the more affordable tea.

In the rational world of theoretical economics this makes tremendous sense. But things are a little different in real life. Take the case of the recent rapid rise in the price of various pulses, tur dal in particular. The prices recently crossed Rs 200 per kg. The annual increase in price has been more than 100%. In this scenario is the Indian consumer substituting tur dal for something else?

The most logical thing to do would be to consume other pulses like urad, moong, etc. But the prices of other pulses have also risen at a very rapid rate, though not as fast as tur dal. Further, it is also a matter of taste. If the consumer is used to a certain kind of food, it is not so easy to switch to something else overnight.

As economist Subir Gorkarn writes in a recent column in the Business Standard: “Unquestionably, there is some substitution going on between different pulses, but large parts of the country are predominantly tur consumers, while, in others, rising incomes create a long-term, superior-good shift towards tur.”

There have been several media reports talking about how chicken is now cheaper than dal.

It has been jocularly suggested on the social media that chicken being cheaper than dal will lead to regular dal eaters moving to regularly eating chicken. Only if it was as simple as that.

While chicken may be cheaper than dal, it still costs more than Rs 100 per kg and hence, cannot really replace dal as an everyday staple. Dal-chawal or dal-roti is an everyday staple for many Indians. And this cannot be replaced by chicken, unless it starts to cost what dal used to up until a few years back.

Also, it is worth remembering here that dal is a huge source of protein. Further, as incomes go up and people eat better, the demand for food high on protein tends to go up. Data from ministry of agriculture points out that the production of dal has gone up from 14.76 million tonnes in 2007-2008 to 19.77 million tonnes in 2013-2014. In 2014-2015, the total production fell to 17.2 million tonnes. The yield has gone up from 625 kg per hectare in 2007-2008 to 798 kg per hectare in 2013-2014.

Despite an increase in yield as well as production, the troubling point is that the per capita availability of pulses has come down over the long run. A 2014 research report titled India’s Pulses Scenario authored by the National Council of Applied Economics Research (NCAER) points out: “Pulse production has recorded less than one percent annual growth during the past 40 years, which is less than half of the growth rate in Indian human population. Consequently per capita production and availability of pulses in the country has witnessed sharp decline.”

“Per capita net pulse availability has declined from around 60 grams per day in the 1950s to 40 grams in the 1980s and further to around 35 grams per day in 2000s. However, in the past four years, there has been significant increase in consumption averaging around 50 grams due to somewhat higher production,” the report further points out.

This largely explains why despite an increase in yields as well as overall production, dal prices have gone up over the last few years, with huge spurts in between. How can this be corrected?

A recent newsreport in the Mint points out that a part of the correction has automatically happened through the substitution effect. People are eating more eggs than they were in the past.

Between 1961 and 2013, the per capita availability of eggs has jumped from 7 to 58. At the same time consumption data provided by the National Sample Survey Office suggests “a declining trend in the consumption of pulses—from 11.8 kg per person per year in 1987-88 to 8.4 kg per person per year in 2009-10.”

During the same period “the consumption of eggs went up from 6 per year to 21 per year in rural India and from 17 to 32 in urban areas.”

This is something that the World Health Organisation also suggests when they say: “There is a strong positive relationship between the level of income and the consumption of animal protein, with the consumption of meat, milk and eggs increasing at the expense of staple foods.”

Nevertheless, what about the vegetarians? A significant proportion of Indians are vegetarians and that also needs to be taken into account. They need to eat dal for their protein needs.

The area under production of pulses over the decades has more or less been stagnant. In 1980-1981, the area under production had stood at 22.46 million hectares. This has increased marginally over the years to 24.79 million hectares in 2013-2014. In fact, the number was at 22.09 million hectares in 2008-2009.

The yield in 1980-81 was at 473 kg per hectare. It has since jumped to 798 per kg hectare in 2013-2014. This is an increase of around 1.6% per year. The Indian population has grown at a faster rate.

Further, as the NCAER research report referred to earlier points out: “Most of the increase in pulse production in recent years has been in gram. Low pulse yield in India compared to other counties is attributed to poor spread of improved varieties and technologies, abrupt climatic changes, vulnerability to pests and diseases, and generally declining growth rate of total factor productivity.”

Take the case of tur dal. Between 2007-2008 and 2013-2014, the total production increased from 3.08 million tonnes to 3.34 million tonnes. During the same period the production of gram jumped from 5.75 million tonnes to 9.79 million tonnes. So once one adjusts for the production of gram, the production of other pulses hasn’t gone up by much though their demand has.

A major reason for the area under production of pulses remaining stagnant can be explained the way economic incentives are have been structured for Indian farmers. The incentives are heavily skewed towards production of rice, wheat and sugarcane. And that explains why we have excess stock of these food products.

If prices of pulses are to come down in the years to come, the area under production needs to go up. For that to happen, the economic incentives the way they are currently structured, need to change. And that’s ‘dal’onomics 101 for you.

The column was originally published on Swarajyamag.com on Oct 28, 2015