Growth of Crop-output in Kerala–Is it Real or monetary?

Abstract

The main feature of the development of agriculture in Kerala in the last five decades is the change in cropping pattern and shift in cultivation, that is, shift in the cultivated area under food grain crops to non-food grain crops and shift in the cultivated area under one non-food grain crop to another non-food grain crop. The growth of agricultural crop output and productivity has been affected by many factors. The sources of output growth like area effect, yield effect and cropping pattern effect have relevance in deciding the programmes of agricultural development and priorities of investment in it. The growth of agricultural output in the state like that of other parts of India is influenced by the gross cropped area, productivity and level of prices. The increase in the agricultural crop output is decomposed into real and monetary components. The real component includes area effect, yield effect, cropping pattern effect and interaction effect. The monetary elements consist of the pure price effect, price yield effect, price cropping pattern effect and total interaction effect. From the analysis of thedecomposition of output growth into real and monetary components of Kerala agriculture in the last five decades, the general conclusions arrived at are: price factor is the major element in determining the relative contribution of different elements to the growth of crop output and the overall growth in the Kerala agriculture is monetary growth in nature rather than real growth.