ECONOMICS OF FOOD SELF-SUFFICIENCY IN PUNJAB

The food security of the country, therefore, will remain dependent on the main surplus grain producing region of Punjab-Haryana in the coming years as well, as it has been in the past four decades. So to maintain food self-sufficiency wheat and rice production in the Punjab-Haryana region has not only to be sustained at the present high level, but also to be expanded further. For accomplishing that, wheat and rice production in the region has to be paid much greater attention than has been the attitude of the central government policy makers in recent years. The profitability of wheat and rice production in the region has been eroding since the beginning of the current decade due to the stagnation of yield rates, rising cost of farm inputs and slow growth of the minimum support prices of wheat and paddy. The persistence of this negative trend in profitability of wheat and rice production would have certainly endangered the sustainability of production of these grains at the present scale in the Punjab-Haryana region.