Demand and Supply Projections for Pulses in India

Background: The per capita net availability of pulses in India has been increased from 15.5 kg per year in 2018-19 to 19.6 kg in 2021-22. Efforts made to bridge the gap between demand and supply of pulses in the country has resulted in reducing the gap to some extent in recent years and still country is depended on import to meet the growing demand of the pulses such as pigeon pea, lentils and peas. Few studies predicted the demand and supply of pulses as a whole in the country and no studies analyzed the pulse wise demand supply gap in India. Hence, the present study was proposed to predict the demand and supply of major pulses such as chickpea (Gram/Chana), pigeon pea (Tur/Arhar), black gram (urd bean), mung bean (Green gram) and lentil (Masur) in India for a period, 2024-2030. Methods: The present study has been used the crop data on area, production and yield of major pulses including chickpea (Gram/Chana), pigeon pea (Tur/Arhar), black gram (urd bean), mung bean (Green gram) and lentil (Masur) for a period of 29 years (1985-2024) collected from the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of India, New Delhi. Household consumption expenditure data was collected from the National Sample Survey office for 2011-12 from the Government of India. The supply projection was estimated by using linear regression model and demand projections were done by using behaviouristic approach. Result: Decadal trend in area, production and yield of pulses from 1970-2010 showed mixed trends of increase and decrease, whereas in 2010-2020, chickpea, pigeon pea, mung bean and black gram showed positive trend in area, production and yield but lentil alone showed negative trend in production. Import dependency of the pulses in the total availability has reduced to 8.92 per cent in 2021-22 from 19.42 per cent in 2009-10. Import dependency of the pulses in the total availability has reduced to 8.92 per cent in 2021-22 from 19.42 per cent in 2009-10. The availability of pulses has grown at a rate of 3.73 per cent from 2009 to 2021. Chick Pea, Tur, Mung bean, Urd bean and Lentils together contributed on an average 88.7 per cent to the total pulses production and 83.73 per cent of pulses availability from 2013 to 2021. Production of these five pulses has increased to 23.04 million tonnes in 2020-21 from 17.3 million tonnes from 2013-14. Gram is the single pulse contributed more than 40 per cent of the pulse production of the country in the above period. Demand supply projection showed a net surplus of 0.81-3.89 mt in the case of pulses and 5.64 -7.63 mt in the case of gram and 0.89 to 1.91 mt in Urd and 0.68 to 1.57 mt in Mung bean during 2024-2030. But in the case of pigeon pea and lentil there may be a net deficit in the range of 3-2.42 and 1.13-1.04 mt, respectively, during 2024-2030. Efforts should be made to bridge the gap in demand and supply of pigeon pea and lentil by the way of bringing new areas under pulses and developing the technologies suitable for the clusters.