Pulses for Food and Nutritional Security of India: Production, Markets and Trade

This book provides an in-depth analysis of India’s pulses sector in terms of production, prices, markets, and trade. Pulses play a pivotal role in a developing country like India for all categories of people due to its rich protein content (double that of wheat and three times more than that of rice). Despite being an important crop from the point of view of food, nutrition, and environmental security, the focus of food security policies in developing countries has been more on wheat and rice production.

This book analyses factors influencing the supply of pulses with a greater emphasis on government interventions such as minimum support price (MSP) and National Food Security Mission (NFSM), the effectiveness of MSP and factors influencing farmers’ access to MSP, the import dependency implications through a detailed import pricing behavior of major importers of major pulses. It investigates production, market dynamics, and trade implications related to two major pulses, chickpea and pigeonpea, produced by all pulse-producing States in India. Analysis of farmer’s awareness of MSP and factors influencing access to MSP are undertaken through a comprehensive household survey from the States of Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh. Finally, the book analyses import implications and import pricing behaviour for all major pulses imported by India.

The book would be very useful for researchers working on the issues of agricultural production and food security, for agriculture and agri-business students, as well as for policy makers to understand the inherent dynamics in the pulses sector.

Dr. Poornima is an Assistant Professor and Chairperson at the Centre for Management in agriculture of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. She did her PhD in economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. During her Doctoral Research she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship, during which she worked at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Prior to joining Indian Institute of Management, she has worked as faculty at the Department of Policy Studies of TERI University, New Delhi. She has also worked as a Research Fellow at the Centre for WTO Studies of Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) and as a Research Assistant at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). Her main areas of teaching and research include international trade, agriculture, sustainable agricultural technology adoption, farm labor migration, food security and issues related to WTO. She has considerable number of publications to her credit. She has presented papers at various national and international conferences including European Trade Study Group’s Annual Conference at University of Vienna and Post-Graduate Conference at University of Nottingham as a student, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), International Association of Agricultural Economists, University of Canberra, Nanjing Agricultural University etc. as a faculty. She has published papers in top peer reviewed international journals such as Agricultural Economics, Journal of Development Studies and Applied Economics. She has also published a book with Springer titled ’Rice Productivity and Food Security in India’.