Pulses in Uttarakhand: Has Their Potential Been Tapped Enough to Attain Food and Nutritional Security?

Pulses are the edible seeds that grow within the pods of legume family and are one of the key components of balanced diet. The history of growing and consuming pulses can be traced back through the ages. In India, pulses are being cultivated for millennia. According to Kumar and Dutt (2019), nearly 5.63 to 10.90 percentage share of food grains production in India is attributed to pulses.
 
Pulses are essential for maintaining human, animal and environmental health. Pulses being rich source of protein are important for growth and wellbeing, especially for vegetarians. Besides, they are store house of vitamins, minerals and fiber making them ideal for imparting therapeutic nutrition as well. The residue of pulses is used as animal fodder improving animal health. Pulses also provide environmental benefits. Pulses improve soil quality as they fix nitrogen in the soil, lower soil erosion and decrease the use of synthetic fertilizers. They have low carbon footprint compared to animal protein sources and are highly water efficient. Thus, pulses are vital for environment sustenance in addition to providing food and nutritional security.
 
Currently malnutrition has become a global health crisis. From 828 million hungry people in 2021 to more than one billion obese people in the world, the picture of malnutrition is reigning around the world. Food insecurity is rising at an alarming rate owing to climate change, COVID-19 pandemic, war/conflicts and poverty. In 2021, nearly 924 million were facing food insecurity at various levels with 45 million children under 5 suffering from wasting and 149 million from stunting. According to a joint report released by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO (2022) there are  almost 3.1 billion people could not afford healthy diet in 2021. It was reported that 45% children die due to hunger and related causes.
 
India faces a similar predicament with regard to malnutrition. As per the NFHS-5 (2022) report, 35.5% of children under the age of 5 suffer from stunted growth, 19.3% experience wasting and 32.1% are underweight. The report also highlights that 18.7% of women and 16.2% of men have Body Mass Index (BMI) values below the normal range. Additionally, a concerning 67% of children below 5 years old and 57% of women in their reproductive years are affected by anemia.
 
Adequate and nutritious food can play a crucial role in mitigating these health challenges. The dysfunctional food demand–supply chain needs to be tackled in order to address the issue of food and nutritional insecurity. Policy programmes have historically been instrumental in filling the demand-supply gaps. For instance, as compared to the target, National Food Security Mission (NFSM) achieved the bumper production of pulses to the tune of 24.51 million tonnes during 2017-18 as per the report of (Kumar et al., 2020).
 
Pulses being climate resilient and nutrient rich can play a vital role in dealing the issues of nutritional insecurity, especially protein deficiency and hidden hunger. Although today India is the largest producer of pulses in the world, pulses were not given as much importance as major cereals during green revolution, sidelining the pulses to the non-irrigated areas. From 1950-2008, the productivity of pulses and area under pulses grew by only 45 and 25%, respectively. Till 2016, the domestic production of pulses was less than 20 MT and thus, depending on imports to meet the demand. However, now comparatively an increase in the production with decline in import and an increase in export are being witnessed. Increasing trends have been observed in export of agricultural commodities except for pulse crops because of prohibition of export of pulses. Moreover, import of pulses has also shown an increasing trend as reported by Qasim (2021). However, it has been estimated in the report of World Food Programme (2022) that in 2032-33 the demand for total pulses would be around 35.23 MT and the total supply would be around 33.95 MT and a deficit of 5-6 MT in domestic supply would continue (WHO, 2022). This calls for improving the production across the country.
 
The present paper deals with the role of pulses in achieving food and nutritional security in special context to Uttarakhand state of India. Uttarakhand is a young state carved from Uttar Pradesh in 2000. It is located in the northern part of India with largely hilly terrain. Of the total 13 districts, 10 are completely hilly districts with undulated topography. Eighty six percent of total geographical area is under hills and 14% is under plains. The economy of the state majorly depends on agriculture but unfortunately owing to its topography only 14% of the geographical area is currently under cultivation. Out of the total net irrigated area, 85.83% is in plains and 14.17% is in hills as per State Horticulture Mission (2023). The agriculture sector in the state continues to remain heavily dependent on rainfall. Moreover, the sloppy lands in hilly terrain are highly prone to erosion and have low nutrient status with no irrigation facilities, thus making agriculture a tedious task.
 
Considering the wide agro-climatic conditions and topography of the state, the paper was undertaken with the aim of exploring the dynamics, diversification and production decomposition of pulses in Uttarakhand and its association in mitigating food and nutritional insecurity.

Data
 
The area, production and yield data of pulses grown in Uttarakhand was taken from ‘Agricultural Statistics of Uttarakhand’ given on the official website of Agriculture Department, Government of Uttarakhand (2022). The Gross Sown Area (GSA) was sourced from Indiastat (2023). Data gaps were filled through interpolation. Production of total pulses was linearly extrapolated to estimate pulses production for 2035-36. The data from Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Planning Department of Uttarakhand (2023b) was taken to understand the food and nutritional security status in relation to the pulses.
 
Growth and instability analysis
 
Compound annual growth rate (CGR) was used for estimating growth. The compound annual growth function was specified as semi-log equation as suggested by Rehman (2011):
 

InY = a + bt + e
 

Y = Area (ha)/production (tonnes)/yield (qtl/ha).
a = Intercept.
t = Year.
b = 1+ r (The slope coefficient ‘b’ measures the instantaneous growth rate).
r = Compound growth rate.
 
The compound growth rate is calculated by multiplying by 100 using the following equation:
 

CGR = [antilog b - 1] * 100
 

 
Eq. (1) is estimated using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method. The t-test was applied to test the significance of ‘b’.
 
For measuring instability Cuddy Della Valle Index (CDVI) as described by Cuddy and Valle (1978) was used. It is given by:
 

 
Where:
CV = Per cent.
R² = Coefficient of determination of a time trend regression adjusted for its degrees of freedom.
CDVI <15 shows low instability.
 
CDVI varying between 15 and 30 shows medium instability and CDVI>30 shows high instability.
 
The growth and instability analysis was done for the period 2005 to 2020.
 
Pulses diversification
 
Diversification of pulses was estimated using Simpson’s Diversification Index (SDI) as described by Adjimoti and Kwadzo (2018). The proportion of pulse i is given by 
 

 
Where:
ai = Area under pulse I and A is the total area under pulses. The SDI is widely used and is given by
 

 
SDI varies between 0 and 1 with values nearing 0 indicate specialization and those nearing 1 indicate diversification.
 
Also, proportion given by the following formula was found out to estimate pulses area proportion:
 

 

 
Decomposition analysis
 
The decomposition analysis (Kakali, 2006; Siju, 2001) was done using the equation below:
 

 
which translates to,
 

Change in Production = Yield effect + Area effect + Interaction effect
 

Where:
ΔP = P_C - P_B = Change in production.
ΔY = Y_C - Y_B = Change in yield.
ΔA = A_C - A_B = Change in area.

A_B, P_B and Y_B are the area, production and yield of base year.

A_C, P_C and Y_C are the area, production and yield of current year.

Thus, the production is decomposed into 3 effects viz., yield effect, area effect and interaction effect. The decomposition analysis was done for 3 periods, viz. 2005-10, 2010-15 and 2015-20.

The work was done at G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, District U. S. Nagar, Uttarakhand during the period 2022-23.

Area, production and yield of pulses in Uttarakhand
 
The major pulses grown in state are pigeon pea, kidney bean, black gram, green gram, moth bean, horse gram, black soybean, chick pea, pea, lentil and cowpea.
 
Area, production and yield of pulses have shown increasing trends in Uttarakhand. The area under pulses increased from 51,478 ha in 2005-06 to 64,314 ha in 2020-21 indicating 25 per cent increase. The proportion of area under pulses with respect to gross sown area also showed increasing trend (Fig 1). The proportion increased from 4.25 in 2005-06 to 6.45 in 2020-21. Thus, it can be concluded that not only absolute area under pulses but also proportion of pulses in gross sown area increased which indicates substitution by and expansion of area under pulses.


 
The production of pulses in Uttarakhand increased from 28,811 tonnes in 2005-06 to 62,340 tonnes in 2020-21 thereby indicating an increase by 116 per cent. This could have possibly been due to increase in yield from 5.6 qt per ha in 2005-06 to 9.7 qt per ha in 2020-21, apart from increase in area. The technological advancement in pulses and increase in area under pulses could be attributed to schemes like National Food Security Mission - Pulses (NFSM-Pulses), Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) and other schemes like Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY) focusing on agricultural inputs. Under NFSM-Pulses, increase in pulses production was targeted through extension and promotion of improved technologies i.e., seed, Integrated Nutrient Management (INM) including soil amendments, micronutrients, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and resource conservation technologies along with capacity building of the farmers. Incentives for purchase of conoweeders, knapsack sprayers and other farm implements were provided to farmers for cultivation of pulses and other crops under NFSM. However, under Re-vamped NFSM, according to its operational guidelines given in 2018 by Government of Uttarakhand (2023), increase in production of pulses and other crops under NFSM was targeted through area expansion and productivity enhancement but in a sustainable manner. Additionally, in Re-vamped NFSM, intercropping of commercial crops with pulses was also promoted. Under RKVY, states were incentivized to increase public investment in agriculture and allied sector. RKVY aimed for integrated development of major food crops including pulses as described in guidelines for NADP by Agriculture Department, Government of Uttarakhand (2007).
 
The production of pulses is linearly extrapolated to be 82,987 tonnes in 2035-36. However, this might not be in correspondence with increasing population. On an all-India basis, it is estimated that India needs an annual growth of 4.2 per cent to ensure projected demand of 30 million tonnes by 2030. Mukherjee (2018) reported that although pulses yield show an increasing trend, Uttarakhand lags behind Himachal Pradesh among north-western Himalayan states.
 
Growth and instability of area, production and yield of different pulses grown in Uttarakhand
 
Area under pulses
 
In Uttarakhand, horsegram had the highest area cover (13,340 ha) among all the pulses in 2020-21, followed by lentil (12,076 ha) and black gram (kharif) (11,944 ha) (Table 1). The least grown crops were moth bean (1 ha) and green gram (zaid) (2 ha). Table 2 shows that the diversification of pulses was quite high and stabilized between 0.8 and 0.9. It is evident from Table 1 that area under total pulses increased at the rate of approximately 1 per cent per annum with low instability. All kharif pulses showed increasing compound growth rates except moth bean and minor pulses (other kharif pulses). Minor pulses declined at a rate (-6.8 per cent per annum) higher than moth bean (-1.35 per cent per annum). Moth bean showed highly unstable decline whereas minor kharif pulses showed decline with medium instability. Kidney bean showed the highest CGR (6.24 per cent per annum) along with low instability among kharif pulses indicating a stable increase in area.
 




All Rabi pulses except pea showed overall decline in area as indicated by their negative growth rates (Table 1). Both chickpea and pea showed decline and increase respectively with medium instability whereas lentil and minor Rabi pulses (other Rabi pulses) showed low and high instability respectively. Area under black gram (zaid) declined at a very high rate (11.96 per cent per annum) with high instability. Overall, area under black gram (whole year) increased at the rate of 1 per cent per annum with low instability whereas green gram (whole year) showed negative growth rate (9.12 per cent per annum) with high instability.
 
Production of pulses
 
The production of pulses grew at the rate of approximately 4 per cent per annum with low instability (Table 3). All kharif pulses showed increasing production as indicated by their positive CGRs except minor kharif pulses (other kharif pulses). Kidney bean, black gram (kharif) and horsegram showed low instability. Black soybean and pigeon pea showed medium instability whereas moth bean and minor kharif pulses showed high instability.


 
All rabi pulses except minor rabi pulses (other rabi pulses) showed positive CGRs indicating increasing trends. Minor rabi pulses showed high instability whereas other pulses of rabi season showed medium instability. Black gram (zaid) showed negative CGR (-8.62 per cent per annum) with high instability indicating an unstable declining trend. Overall, black gram (all seasons) showed increasing trend with low instability.
 
Yield of pulses
 
The yield of pulses increased at the CGR of 2.98 per cent per annum with low instability (Table 4). All pulses showed positive CGRs of yield indicating technological advancement. The highest CGR of yield was observed in minor rabi pulses (other rabi pulses) (4.24 per cent per annum) followed by green gram (whole year) (4.07 per cent per annum) whereas lowest CGR of less than 2 percent per annum was observed in chickpea. Minor kharif pulses, minor rabi pulses, pea, lentil and black gram (zaid) showed medium instability. High instability was observed in green gram (whole year).  Some authors like Kumar and Malik (2022) have also found positive compound growth rates for area (0.14 per cent per annum), production (1.09 per cent per annum) and yield (0.97 per cent per annum) of pulses in India.


 
Decomposition of production
 
For the period, 2005-10, change in production of total pulses was majorly due to positive yield effect (Table 5). Among kharif pulses, change in production was mainly due to positive yield effect in case of pigeon pea, black gram (kharif), horsegram, black soybean and minor kharif pulses whereas it was due to positive area effect in case of green gram (kharif) and moth bean. Among rabi pulses, change in production was observed mainly due to positive area effect in case of chickpea, pea and minor rabi pulses whereas in case of lentil it was due to positive yield effect.



In 2010-15, change in production of total pulses was again mainly due to positive yield effect (Table 6). Among kharif pulses, change in production was majorly due to positive yield effect in case of black gram (kharif) and black soybean whereas in case of pigeon pea, green gram (kharif), moth bean, horsegram and minor kharif pulses, it was due to positive area effect. In case of rabi and zaid pulses, positive area effect was dominant. Overall, change in black gram (whole year) production was dominated by yield effect whereas that in green gram (whole year) was dominated by area effect.


 
In the period 2015-20, change in production of total pulses was due to almost equal percentages of area effect (47.15 per cent) and yield effect (45.10 per cent) which indicates that both yield effect and area effect were prominent (Table 7). However, area effect was slightly more than the yield effect. Among kharif pulses, change in production was majorly due to positive yield effect in case of pigeon pea and black gram (kharif) whereas in case of kidney bean, green gram (kharif), moth bean, horsegram, black soybean and minor kharif pulses, it was due to positive area effect. In case of rabi and zaid pulses except black gram (zaid), positive area effect was dominant. Overall, change in both black gram (whole year) and green gram (whole year) production was dominated by positive yield effect.


 
Pulse-based mixed cropping systems in Uttarakhand
 
In India, various cropping systems are employed for the cultivation of pulses. These systems include sequential cropping, mixed or intercropping, relay cropping, catch cropping and ratoon cropping. Among these, intercropping is the most widely adopted method, covering approximately 70 percent of the pulse cultivation area in India as reported by Singh (2009).
 
In the state of Uttarakhand, a traditional cropping practice known as the “sari system” is prevalent. This method is particularly suitable for non-irrigated fields in hilly regions where pulses are cultivated alongside cereal crops on one terrace farm, while the opposite terrace farm is reserved for a single crop such as rice. The following year, this pattern of crops is swapped between the two terrace farms as reported by Chandra (2020). The primary goal of this practice is to enhance crop diversity and restore soil fertility. Another traditional technique known as “Barahanaja” involves the cultivation of multiple crops simultaneously in the same field. According to Gururani (2021), this method is pursued with the objectives of ensuring food and nutritional security, promoting agro-biodiversity and maintaining environmental health.
 
In Uttarakhand, there are three major pulse-based mixed cropping systems of kharif season (Finger millet + Black Soybean, Finger millet + Black Gram, Finger millet + Horsegram) whereas two major mixed cropping systems (Wheat + Lentil, Wheat + Chickpea) are followed in rabi season. Area under all the mixed cropping systems registered negative CGRs indicating declining trends. The decline was stable in all of the cases except wheat + chickpea (Table 8).


 
Role of pulses in food and nutritional security
 
In the Uttarakhand state, 27% children below 5 are seen to be stunted, 13.2% wasted and 21% underweight. It was reported that 13.9% women and 16.2% men had BMI below normal and 58.8% children below 5 and 42.6% women in reproductive age were anemic.
 
The Food and Nutrition Insecurity Atlas for Uttarakhand 2019-20 as released by Directorate of Economics and Statistics (2023a) states that out of 13 districts 9 districts each were food and nutrition insecure, respectively. Analyzing the status of pulses, it was reported that the per capita net production of pulses was very low in the state. It was 10.44 g/day as against the ICMR norms of 40 g/day. This indicates the low availability of pulses. On the other hand, the per capita consumption of pulses was 52 g/day reflecting good accessibility. The average intake of pulses (g/day) for adults was reported to be 59. But these data were compared to previous set norms of 40 g/day, which has currently revised and therefore there is a need to redefine the availability and accessibility of pulses in the light of the new RDA guidelines which recommend 80 g/day of pulses for a sedentary man and 60 g/d for sedentary woman.
 
It was seen that only 57 per cent consumed pulses on the daily basis in the state. A 26.6 per cent consumed pulses twice/thrice a week and 14 per cent once a week. The protein intake at the state level was 78g/CU/day/individual as against the RDA of 60 g. However, this was true for only 69 percent of the cases whose average protein intake was more than or equal to the RDA (60 g). Rest 31 per  cent intake was less than the RDA i.e. deficient in protein intake. Almost one-third of population is lacking in protein intake in the state. This has to be explored from the lens of bioavailablity of protein from the food sources as being vegetarian could be one of the possible reasons. Plant protein has lower digestibility and quality compared to the animal protein sources owing to presence of antinutritional factors and imbalance of amino acids.  As per the Sample Registration Survey Baseline 2014 statistics, conducted by Saxena (2016) on 27 per cent of population in Uttarakhand were reported to be vegetarian, which means that animal source protein is not included in their daily diet and therefore may be the reason for protein deficiency. Also, low availability of pulses may have contributed to the protein deficiency. Inflation in prices of pulses adversely affecting the affordability could be another probable factor.
 
Nonetheless, the recent ICMR (2023) guidelines set the RDA for protein at 54 g for men and 46g for women and this opens the room to reassess the state of pulses and protein intake on the basis of new guidelines.

In this study, dynamics of area, production and yield of pulses along with their diversification, production decomposition and proportion in gross sown area were studied. Although the area under pulses and production of pulses is showing satisfactory growth, but probing into availability, accessibility and absorption of protein rich pulses, especially for vegetarians in the state is required as still there are 9 districts in the state which show food insecurity as well as nutritional insecurity at various levels. The decline in area under all major pulse-based cropping systems implies that there is scope to reap more benefits of pulse-based cropping systems as part of a holistic approach towards ensuring sustainability and food security. Also, the various government policies and schemes to attain food and nutritional security in the state are faring well but it needs to be complemented with nutritional awareness component. Reviving the traditional method of cropping and consuming pulses in hilly terrains is necessitated. Encouraging an integrated farming approach suitable for hills as well as plains to curb the demand-supply gap is the need of time.
 

All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.