August 23, 2013
India has, for the first time, fixed the minimum support price (MSP) for corn in the 2013-14 crop season on par with common grade rice, at US$20.13/100kg, which could encourage farmers to cultivate corn in place of rice, particularly in Punjab and Haryana.
Cornhas been included in the government''s ambitious crop diversification strategy for the north Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. On the export front, corn is showing positive results with exports reaching a record of around five million tonnes in 2012-13, up 24% from previous years.
The country''s annual cornproductionranges 20-22 million tonnes, of which about 63%-64% is used as feed meal and 16% as starch for industrial purposes. The rest is sold in the open market. It is cultivated during the kharif and rabi seasons.
"Almost a decade earlier, industrial use of corn was just 5%-6% and that for feed meal was less than 50%, but now the demand has grown exponentially, as India''s poultry and livestock industry is rising at almost 10% per annum," said Sain Dass, the president of the Indian Maize Development Association.
According to Dass, demand is higher among livestock and poultry traders as 80% of feed meal consists of corn. Ashok Gulati, agriculture economist and chairman of the Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices, said that corn could be a good and profitable alternative to rice and benefit Indian farmers in several ways.
He added that the government should also provide incentive, other than the latest adjustment of the price support mechanism, to encourage more farmers into corn cultivation as outputs of the crop can be used in starch and feed meal industries. "We need a US$155.06/hectare viability gap funding in corn to kick-start a revolution, which can have remarkable results," Gulati said.
"The biggest problem in promoting corn is not the lack of end-user industries. Once the government promotes its production, it should also ensure farmers get adequate earnings, either from the private or governmental sectors, or else no one will cultivate the crop," another expert said.
Listing the advantages of corn over other cereals crops, Gulati believes that in states like Punjab, groundwater tables can be greatly utilised if corn cultivation is promoted in place of rice as it requires lesser water levels than rice for cultivation and yields much higher returns.
"Hybrid seed technology is available off-the-shelf in corn which can immediately double the yields, from the current amounts of 2.5 tonnes/hectare as against the 10 tonnes/hectare in the US," Gulati explained.
"Presently, only 30% of the total annual corn acreage of about 8.0 tonnes-8.5 million tonnes is under single crop hybrids, which can easily increased," Dass of IMDA said, adding that among all the cereal crops, corn has the second highest area under hybrid seed varieties after bajra - in which hybrid seed varieties are used in almost 50% of the total area.
Dass believes that the monsoon showers this year will push up India''s annual acreage for corn to at least a million hectares. Acreage of corn has also shown considerable increase in the drought-affected areas of Maharashtra and Karnataka in 2013.
"Last year, corn was sown on around 8.5 million hectares, of which 6.5 million was during the kharif season, while this year, kharif corn acreage is already 7.5 million hectare. Hence, I''m hopeful that not only the overall area under corn will rise, but production will also increase to over 23 million tonnes which will be a new record," he said.