Growth Performance of Groundnut in Ananthapuramu District of Andhra Pradesh – A Temporal Analysis

Ananthapuramu district is considered as one of the major groundnut growing districts in the Andhra Pradesh state, with an average area, production and yield of 7.04 lakh hectares, 3.65 lakh tonnes and 512 kg ha-1 respectively, during the present millennium (from 2000-01 to 2018-19). Though the district is drought prone and majority of the cultivated area is under rainfed ecosystem, groundnut still continues to be one of the largest cropped area in the district. This interesting feature of the district has driven to take up the study on the performance of groundnut in the district through Compound Annual Growth Rates (CAGR) and decomposition analysis. CAGR of area, production and yield of the groundnut and decomposition analysis of groundnut production in the district were analyzed from 1970-71 to 2018-19. For lucidity, the study period was divided in three sub-periods viz., Period I (1970-71 to 1985-86), Period II (1986-87 to 1999-2000) and Period III (1999-2000 to 2018-19). It was evident from the results that, the growth performance of groundnut in Ananthapuramu district declined over the years, particularly in Period III, which implies that, despite lot of efforts from researchers and government to encourage groundnut production at macro level, the contribution of groundnut at district level showed a declining trend. This scenario could be attributed to low farm level yields with higher farm level inefficiencies, gaps in production technology, geographical location of the district under rain shadow region, declining scenario in the length of growing period, shift towards competing crops, poor post-harvest support, changing climate, lower yields, low extension contact at field level, low market prices and high abiotic and abiotic stresses. It was opined that, groundnut cultivation in the district should be encouraged with the partnership of private institutional players, where the farmers would get high quality seed, agro-advisory, post-harvest support, value addition support, remunerative and assured price support etc., encouragement of value addition, reduction of the length of market channels to reduce the supply gap between farmer and consumer would help in realignment of the growth performance of groundnut in the district.