Inter-District Variations in Agricultural Production and Productivity of Jammu Division of Jammu & Kashmir

Abstract

Agriculture and its allied activities are the main sources of livelihood in India. Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), a union territory of India is also an agrarian state. More than 70 percent of its population is directly engaged in this sector. Geographically, J&K lies in the Himalayan region and has a huge variation in agro-climate diversity. The climate here varies from sub-tropical in the Jammu division to temperate in the Kashmir division. These climatic variations make it suitable for performing varied cultivation. The productivity of all the major crops in the region has increased manifold since the green revolution but now it is more or less stagnating. Hence, it is useful to examine the productivity of major crops in the union territory. The present paper is an attempt to highlight the overall agricultural production of major food grains crop of J&K from 2000-2001 to 2018-2019. The main focus of the paper is to analyzes the variations in agricultural production and productivity of major crops at the district level in the Jammu division for the period 2010-2011 to 2016-2017. The study is based on secondary data and is empirical in nature. The co-efficient of Variation technique has been used to find out the variations in production and productivity of agricultural crops of the jammu division of J&K. The results show that the overall agricultural production of food grains crops in the region increases over years.It also shows tremendous variations in the production and productivity of the different crops across districts. These variations indicate that there is a need to adopt some specific strategies at the district level for the sustainable development of agricultural growth in the state.