Crop Concentration and Crop Diversification in Birbhum District of West Bengal: Recent Situations

Background: Crop concentration focuses on the pre-dominance of certain crops over other crops in a specific area under study. On the other hand, crop diversification refers to the various types of crops grown in a specific time period under the study area. If the numbers of different types of crops grown in an area during a specified time period is more, the area will have the higher crop diversification and vice versa. So, crop concentration and crop diversification reveal changing pattern of competition among various crops for getting prominence over other crops.
Methods: The present study was initiated to have an analysis of present situation regarding the crop concentration and crop diversification in Birbhum district of West Bengal over the years of 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17 through interpretation of the data related with the area, production and productivity data of the major crops of the district obtained from the Govt. of India data source. (aps.dac.gov.in/APY/Public­_Report1.apx). In this study, the crop concentration of Birbhum district is delineated with the help of the crop concentration Index of Bhatia (1965) and crop diversification is assessed with the help of the Gibbs and Martin Index of diversification (1962).
Result: The present study clearly finds out that the crop concentration index of Birbhum district is low as the mean of the Indices is 34.01 with corresponding standard deviation (SD) of 0.2997 and co-efficient of variance (CV) of Indices is as low as 0.0088 over a period of five years from 2012-13 to 2016-17. This study also reveals that in Birbhum district only 2 crops having more than 10 per centage point share in the gross cropped area (GCA) of the district provides the farmers a wide scope of farming various different crops or group of crops. The present study also points out that the district has a fairly diversified pallet of crops as the Mean value of crop diversification indices is 00.64754 with a standard deviation of as negligible as 00.0001 with a minute CV of Indices of 00.00016 for the time period of 5 years i.e. from 2012-13 to 2016-17, having potential for further well planned diversification of the crops.