Source: Sansad TV
Context
The Union Budget 2026-27 emphasised a crop-specific, regionally differentiated agricultural policy framework to accelerate high-productivity crop diversification — moving beyond cereal monocropping toward high-value horticulture, plantation crops and agroforestry.
What Crop Diversification Means
- Transitioning land use from monoculture systems — notably the water-intensive paddy-wheat rotation — toward pulses, oilseeds, horticulture and commercial tree crops
- Horticulture is the cornerstone, generating higher GVA per unit of land, optimising water use, and building climate resilience
Important Facts for Exams
- Decadal agricultural growth: 4.45 per cent
- Horticulture: 37 per cent of crop sub-sector gross value output; production 370.74 mt (2024-25) — vegetables 217.80, fruits 117.65, others 35.29
- India is second globally in fruits and vegetables; first in onions and shallots (22.42 per cent)
- Horticulture production has exceeded foodgrain production since 2012-13
- Coconut: second in output (22.44 per cent), third in area; 13.97 mt across 2.19 mn ha; yield 6.36 t/ha
- Kerala — largest area; Tamil Nadu — highest production; Andhra Pradesh — highest yield
- Coconut Development Board — headquartered at Kochi, under the Ministry of Agriculture
- Agarwood — from Aquilaria species; yields oud oil; nearly 150 million trees, over 90 per cent in the Northeast; regulated under CITES Appendix II
- Walnut: 3.22 lakh tonnes (2024-25); exports $7.80 million; mainly from Jammu & Kashmir
- MIDH — Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture, the main horticulture scheme
