Agricultural diversification and self-sufficiency in Jammu and Kashmir

This paper has investigated the process of crop diversification and has identified the factors that facilitate the process of diversification in Jammu and Kashmir agriculture. Various measures of crop diversification have been used to explore the extent of diversification or specialization across crops and districts. The Transformed Herfindahl Index, Entropy Indices of diversification and gross cropped area (GCA) under non-foodgrains were regressed on different explanatory variables. The study has revealed that the crop sector is gradually diversifying in favour of high-value crops. The analysis of the extent of diversification at regional level,has shown that the Jammu division is witnessing a specialization in foodgrain crops, while the Kashmir division is depicting a trend towards diversification. Further, an analysis of determinants that facilitated the crop diversification has revealed that all the factors (area irrigated, road density, farm size, fertilizer-use and rainfall) considered under study have significantly affected crop diversification in the state, except fertilizer-use. However, the situation in terms of self-sufficiency of food crops in the state has been found quite dismal, as the demand and supply imbalance in food crops is continuously increasing with the rising population, resulting in huge procurement of foodgrains from other states of the country.