Strategies for Boosting Foodgrains Production in India

India stands at a fascinating agricultural crossroads. On one hand, the country has travelled an extraordinary distance from the food-scarce years of the 1960s, when ship-to-mouth imports defined the national diet, to becoming a marginally surplus producer and the world’s largest exporter of rice. On the other hand, a swelling population, shrinking per-capita farmland, erratic monsoons, and climate stress keep the pressure firmly on. Meeting tomorrow’s food demand is less about one big breakthrough and more about a carefully layered strategy: smarter technology, assured prices, reliable irrigation, targeted subsidies, and a fresh geographic push into the fertile but underperforming eastern plains.

Why foodgrain production still matters 🔗

Foodgrains – rice, wheat, coarse cereals, and pulses – remain the backbone of the national diet and of the rural economy. They cover the bulk of the cropped area, provide most of the calories and proteins consumed by low-income households, and anchor the vast public distribution system that feeds over 80 crore beneficiaries. Over the last five decades, total foodgrain output has expanded roughly sixfold, climbing from about 51 million tonnes in 1950-51 to nearly 297 million tonnes in 2019-20. That long arc of growth is what turned a “begging bowl” economy into a food-exporting one.

Yet the story is not finished. As per the Economic Survey 2025-26, agriculture and allied activities still contribute roughly one-fifth of national income and employ a huge share of the workforce. Fragmenting landholdings, depleting groundwater, soil fatigue, and climate shocks make continued productivity gains harder – and more essential – than before.

The demand side keeps pushing 🔗

Population growth is only part of the story. Rising incomes diversify diets toward pulses, dairy, fruits, and vegetables, while cereals still need to feed both humans and a massive livestock sector. M.S. Swaminathan observed that cereal production may need to roughly double by 2050 to meet the combined needs of a projected 1.8 billion people and the country’s farm animals. That is the scale of ambition behind today’s production strategy.

Technology and high-yield varieties 🔗

The first pillar is productivity per hectare, since arable land is essentially fixed. Here the emphasis has shifted from the classic Green Revolution formula of high-yielding dwarf wheat and rice varieties toward what agricultural scientists now call an “evergreen revolution” – higher yields without ecological damage. Climate-resilient seeds, biofortified grains, short-duration rice, hybrid pulses, and stress-tolerant varieties developed by ICAR institutes are central to this push.

Digital tools are rapidly joining the toolkit. The government’s Digital Agriculture Mission, along with AI-driven precision farming, IoT-based real-time data systems, and drone technology, is being deployed to raise yields and cut input wastage. Soil Health Cards – with over 23 crore distributed so far – help farmers match fertilisers to actual soil needs rather than guesswork, reducing both cost and nutrient runoff.

Mechanisation and farm inputs 🔗

Mechanisation quietly determines how much a farmer can sow, weed, and harvest in a season. Tractors, power tillers, seed drills, combine harvesters, and custom hiring centres have spread far beyond Punjab and Haryana. Expanded urea production, balanced fertiliser use, and improved seed replacement rates complement mechanical capacity, ensuring that additional machine hours translate into additional tonnes in the granary.

Minimum support price and procurement 🔗

A farmer who cannot sell profitably will not invest in productivity. The Minimum Support Price (MSP) system is the government’s principal assurance to growers that effort and risk will be rewarded. From 2018-19 onward, the Centre committed to fixing MSPs at least 50% above the all-India weighted average cost of production for all mandated Kharif, Rabi, and other commercial crops.

The numbers tell the story of intent. MSP for paddy rose from ₹850 per quintal in 2008-09 to ₹2,300 per quintal in 2023-24, while wheat climbed from ₹1,080 to ₹2,425 per quintal over the same period. Procurement volumes also expanded sharply: paddy procurement during 2014-15 to 2023-24 reached 6,900 lakh metric tonnes, a substantial jump from the 4,590 LMT procured in the previous decade. These guaranteed purchases, routed through the Food Corporation of India and state agencies, simultaneously stabilise prices, build buffer stocks, and stock the public distribution pipeline.

Beyond rice and wheat 🔗

A quiet but important shift is underway: MSP now covers 22 crops, encouraging diversification away from the rice-wheat duopoly. Pulses, oilseeds, and millets – long treated as afterthoughts – are being reintegrated into production planning. Millet production reached 175.72 lakh tonnes in 2023-24, and 25 seed hubs have been set up in collaboration with ICAR to supply improved millet varieties. The International Year of Millets in 2023 gave this a strong global push.

Irrigation: the make-or-break resource 🔗

Water, not seed, is often the binding constraint. Before the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY) was launched in 2015, over half the agricultural land in the country relied on the monsoon alone – a gamble that turned tragic during drought years. PMKSY was designed around four interlinked aims: convergence of irrigation investment at the field level, expansion of cultivable area under assured irrigation under “Har Khet Ko Pani”, optimising on-farm water use, and accelerating precision irrigation under “Per Drop More Crop”.

The scheme folded together several older programmes – the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme, the Integrated Watershed Management Programme, and On-Farm Water Management – into a single framework with decentralised District and State Irrigation Plans. The Union Budget 2025-26 allocated roughly ₹8,259 crore to PMKSY, underscoring that irrigation remains the single most leverage-heavy investment in the productivity chain.

Micro-irrigation and water efficiency 🔗

Drip and sprinkler systems, once niche technology, are now being subsidised and scaled. They make it feasible to raise horticultural and even cereal crops in semi-arid zones while cutting water use dramatically. For a country that consumes the largest share of its freshwater in agriculture, every efficiency gain matters.

Subsidies and income support 🔗

Cheap fertiliser, subsidised electricity for pump sets, and concessional farm credit through Kisan Credit Cards (KCC) have long been part of the production-support architecture. Newer instruments add direct income support and risk protection.

PM-KISAN provides ₹6,000 per year in three instalments to eligible landholding farmers, smoothing input purchases before each season. By early 2025, cumulative disbursements under PM-KISAN had crossed ₹3.46 lakh crore. An IFPRI-ICAR study cited in the Economic Survey found that the scheme meaningfully eases liquidity constraints for small and marginal farmers, enabling timely investment in inputs.

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), the crop insurance scheme, protects farmers against losses from drought, pests, and unseasonal rain, making high-input cultivation less of a gamble. Claims paid under PMFBY had crossed ₹1.65 lakh crore by early 2025.

Credit and market linkages 🔗

The Agriculture Infrastructure Fund finances post-harvest assets – cold storage, grading centres, warehouses – that reduce the gap between gross production and what actually reaches consumers. e-NAM, the electronic national agriculture market, now integrates over 1,400 mandis, giving farmers wider price discovery and reducing dependence on a single local buyer. Post-harvest losses, often pegged at 10-15% for cereals, are one of the least glamorous but most productive frontiers for raising effective availability.

Extending the Green Revolution to Eastern India 🔗

Perhaps the most geographically significant strategy is the attempt to replicate – and improve upon – the Punjab-Haryana success story in the east. The Bringing Green Revolution to Eastern India (BGREI) programme, a sub-scheme of the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana launched in 2010-11, is being implemented in Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Eastern Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

The logic is compelling. The eastern region has abundant rainfall, groundwater, and fertile soils, yet historically its rice-based systems have underperformed due to poor seed quality, weak market links, fragmented holdings, and flood-prone fields. BGREI provides assistance for cluster demonstrations on rice and wheat, seed production and distribution, nutrient management and soil ameliorants, integrated pest management, cropping system-based training, farm machinery, irrigation devices, and post-harvest and marketing support.

Why the eastern push makes sense 🔗

The traditional Green Revolution belt is showing signs of ecological fatigue – falling water tables, soil salinity, and declining yield response to fertilisers. Shifting part of the production burden east, where water is plentiful, is both agronomically and environmentally sound. BGREI also aims to move water-intensive crop cultivation from the north-western regions toward their eastern counterparts, easing pressure on depleted aquifers. Bihar and Odisha, in particular, have shown sharp productivity improvements in rice under the programme.

The sustainability question 🔗

Strategies for more grain cannot ignore the cost at which that grain is produced. Excessive paddy cultivation on depleting aquifers, fertiliser overuse, stubble burning, and monoculture have all created collateral damage. Newer initiatives – the National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture, Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana for organic farming clusters, and the National Mission on Natural Farming – try to correct course without sacrificing output. Crop diversification, especially toward pulses and millets, both restores soil health through nitrogen fixation and reduces the water footprint per calorie produced.

The flagship for the next decade 🔗

The latest addition is the PM Dhan Dhaanya Krishi Yojana, approved in July 2025 for a six-year period covering 100 aspirational agricultural districts, with objectives spanning productivity, crop diversification, sustainable practices, post-harvest storage at panchayat and block levels, irrigation, and access to short- and long-term credit. It is essentially a distillation of everything the production strategy has learned so far, concentrated on districts where the marginal returns to intervention are highest.

Connecting production to food security 🔗

More grain in the granary is only meaningful if it reaches plates. The National Food Security Act, 2013, the public distribution system, buffer stocking by the Food Corporation of India, and the One Nation One Ration Card scheme – which now enables portability across all 36 states and UTs – close the loop between field and family. Record output and a robust distribution network are what allowed the government to provide free foodgrains to NFSA beneficiaries during the pandemic and beyond. Production strategy, in other words, is inseparable from entitlement design.

What do you think? Given the twin pressures of rising demand and shrinking natural resources, should the next phase of India’s foodgrain strategy prioritise further yield intensification in established belts, or a deeper investment in eastern and rainfed regions? And how should policymakers balance the guaranteed-price model of MSP with the ecological costs that come with it?

References

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK599611/
2. https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/economicsurvey/doc/eschapter/echap06.pdf
3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3818607/
4. https://www.smsfoundation.org/understand-challenges-and-5-ways-to-boost-agricultural-development-in-india/
5. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2098424
6. https://www.ibef.org/government-schemes/pradhan-mantri-krishi-sinchayee-yojana
7. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1707025
8. https://www.indiafilings.com/learn/bringing-green-revolution-to-eastern-india-bgrei/