Potato Production in India: a Critical Appraisal on Sustainability, Forecasting, Price and Export Behaviour

Abstract

India is the second largest producer of potato in the world. The present study aims at examining the growth, sustainability, market and export situations of Indian potatoes during the period 1966–1967 to 2019–2020 using time series data of area, production, productivity, market prices, export amount and values in major growing states, markets and importing countries, respectively. Descriptive, sustainability, price dependence analysis is taken up to study the internal production and market situation. Box Jenkin’s ARIMA methodology is taken up to forecast the future area, production and productivity of India and the major growing states. To analyse the export behaviour, Markov Chain analysis is taken up. The study reveals that although there have been growths in area, production and productivity, the average productivity is far below the world highest productivity. Sustainability analysis reveals differential sustainability status of major growing states with respect to area, production and productivity. Forecasting of area, production and productivity reveals that India is expected to produce 56 million tonnes of potato from 2.2 million hectares of area with an expected productivity of 25.24 tonnes per hectare, much below the present highest productivity of the world. Study of seasonality of prices and markets cointegration reveals seasonal and lag dependence of prices with only unidirectional market cointegration. The Markov Chain analysis reveals that excepting Saudi Arabia and Oman there will be reduced import of Indian potatoes by other major importing countries. Thus, the findings of the whole study suggest augmentation in the process of production and marketing (both internal and international) for Indian potatoes.