Agricultural Outlook and Situation Analysis Reports: Rabi Outlook Report January 2016

Accordingly, the agricultural outlook and situation analysis undertaken in this study refers to the main crop based food items: cereals (specifically rice, wheat, jowar, bajra, maize and overall coarse grains), pulses (gram, tur), selected fruits and vegetables (banana, potato, onion), sugarcane and edible oils (groundnut, rapeseed/ mustard, soybean). In addition the analysis also covers milk, one livestock product. The need for monitoring and analysis of emerging food scenarios is important for India both because of significant dependence of output on the monsoon rains and the fact that globally India is one of the major consumers of food crops influencing markets. Management of agriculture from a public policy perspective requires organisation of this information and analysis as inputs to policy making. Against this backdrop the National Food Security Mission (NFSM), Ministry of Agriculture, commissioned a 3–Year study to National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in 2011–12 to bridge this important gap in analytical inputs for understanding the emerging agricultural scenarios both in the short-term of one or two quarters and also in the medium to longer term.