Structural Change in Rice-Wheat Crop Yield in India: A Multiple Breakpoint Analysis

Rice and wheat are grown in sequence on the same land in the same year in South and South-East Asian cropping land to meet the demand for food of a rapidly increasing population. However, the rice-wheat system being the dominant cropping system in India is exhibiting a declining trend in recent times. This study aims at investigating a structural break in annual crop yield of two major foodgrains in India namely rice and wheat following multiple structural break analysis due to Bai-Peron for the period 1961 to 2018 using FAO(Food & Agricultural Organization) dataset of the United Nations following semi-logarithmic growth model both at level and growth. The results show that both rice and wheat yield are non-stationary at level but stationary in the first difference. The Bai-Perron multiple breakpoint test shows the presence of a structural break in both rice and wheat yield and these are present only in level but not in growth. This study has found a single break in rice yield in the year 1988, and two structural breakpoints in the years 1969 and 1998 for wheat yield. The yield growth has fallen for both rice and wheat in the post-break period compared to the pre-break period. Although the growth of rice yield in the post-break period was 1.388% compared to the pre-break period of 1.772%, the wheat yield exhibited acceleration after the green revolution with growth of 3.018% in the post-break period. The wheat growth, however, has slowed down since the late 1990s due to several ecological constraints including climate change. The above observations are quite consistent with the view that the dual goals of self-reliance and sustainable resource management are mutually incompatible. Resource-conserving technologies and crop diversification are required to be implemented to ensure the sustainability of the rice-wheat cropping system in the Indo-Gangetic plains to overcome food security problems in the region. Appropriate policy reform both at the macro level as well as at the sectoral level is necessary for arresting and reversing the present degradation trends. caused by both institutional and ecological factors.