Like with rice-wheat, many economists and policy analysts conflate Punjab’s agriculture with that of Haryana. Both states are seen to embody the best and worst of the Green Revolution, helping India turn self-sufficient, if not surplus, in rice and wheat production and also paying a steep environmental price through mono-cropping of the two cereals. But just as wheat and rice are grains apart, the field realities are somewhat different for Punjab and Haryana, the latter of which goes to the polls for its state assembly on October 5. The Punjab story Rice-wheat monoculture — farmers growing just the two crops during the kharif (monsoon) and rabi (winter-spring) seasons respectively, year after year — is an apt description for Punjab’s agriculture. Table 1 shows the average share of rice in Punjab’s total crop area sown during the kharif season over the last five years (2019-20 to 2024-25) at 86.8 per cent. The average share of wheat during rabi is as high as 97.9 per cent. In absolute terms, the state’s area under rice cultivation has risen from 28.9 lakh hectares (lh) to 31.9 lh between 2014-15 and 2023-24. The increase is even more when compared to the 20.2 lh of 1990-91 and 26.1 lh of 2000-01. Area under wheat cultivation has not gone up as much — from 32.7 lh in 1990-91 to 34.1 lh in 2000-01 and 35.1 lh in 2023-24. Punjab ranks third in both wheat and rice output. But India has only eight major wheat-producing states, as against 16 for rice. Rice is also a water-intensive crop, requiring about 25 irrigations compared to 4-5 for wheat. The problem of too much production — also reflected in the fiscal cost of procuring and stocking surplus grain — and depleting groundwater tables in Punjab, thus, stems more from rice than wheat. Haryana: A more diversified picture Haryana presents a far less of a monoculture cropping pattern. As can be seen from Table 2, rice accounts for less than half of the state’s kharif crop area. Wheat, too, has just over three-fourths share of the overall rabi season acreage. Haryana farmers cultivate a fairly varied crop mix that includes cotton, bajra (pearl millet) and guar (cluster bean) in kharif, and rapeseed-mustard, chana (chickpea) and sunflower in rabi. Even within rice, 56.2 per cent of the average area in Haryana during 2019-20 to 2023-24 was planted to basmati varieties. That share was a mere 16.5 per cent for Punjab. Basmati paddy, unlike regular non-basmati varieties, is not procured at a fixed minimum support price (MSP) by government agencies. This rice is largely exported or sold at a premium in the domestic market. There is no “surplus” problem from growing basmati — and that is what is predominantly planted in Haryana. Basmati paddy also consumes less water. Non-basmati varieties are mostly transplanted in mid-June (it used to be even from mid-May before 2008, when the Punjab government imposed restrictions) at the peak of summer. It requires irrigating the field almost daily to maintain standing water at 4-5 cm depth. Basmati varieties, by contrast, are suitable for transplanting only in July with the monsoon rains. This enables the crop’s flowering and grain development to happen during October, when day temperatures fall below 30 degrees Celsius. The cool climate is ideal for accumulation of 2-Acetyl-1-Pyrroline, the highly volatile compound contributing to the characteristic fragrance of basmati grains. The aroma retention is less if transplantation is in June followed by flowering and grain-filling in September, when temperatures are still high. Haryana’s more diversified cropping profile, extending to the rice varieties being cultivated, has a lot to do with agro-ecological factors. The state’s extensive canal network of 1,594 channels having a length of 14,814 km basically irrigates its northeast (Ambala, Yamuna Nagar, Kurukshetra, Kaithal, Karnal, Panipat and Sonipat), central (Jind, Hisar, Rohtak and Bhiwani) and northwest (Fatehabad and Sirsa) districts. Haryana’s two main canal systems — Western Yamuna and Bhakra (which gets water from Punjab’s Sutlej and Beas rivers) — don’t cover the southern districts, from Charkhi Dadri and Jhajjar to Mahendragarh, Rewari, Gurugram, Faridabad, Nuh and Palwal. The limited access to irrigation (63.7 per cent, 78.9 per cent, 79.4 per cent and 80.5 per cent of the gross cropped area for Mahendragarh, Charkhi Dadri, Nuh and Palwal respectively, compared to the state average of 93.7 per cent for 2021-22) means that southern Haryana farmers usually sow bajra, guar and jowar during kharif and wheat, mustard, chana and barley in the rabi season. The cotton belt extends from Sirsa, Fatehabad and Jind down to Hisar, Bhiwani and Charkhi Dadri. The challenges Haryana, in recent times, has sought to promote crop diversification through MSP procurement and price deficiency payments under a Bhavantar Bharpai Yojana (BBY) scheme. This is being implemented mainly in bajra, mustard and sunflower seed, while technically also covering groundnut, chana, moong, and 16 vegetable and 3 fruit crops. The state government procured 776,909 tonnes of bajra, 747,633 tonnes of mustard and 16,489 tonnes of sunflower seed during the 2020-21 marketing season. In subsequent seasons, it opted for a mix of physical procurement (573,652 tonnes in 2023-24 and 1,105,927 tonnes in 2024-25 for mustard and 4,065 tonnes in 2021-22, 2,002 tonnes in 2022-23 and 38,187 tonnes in 2024-25 for sunflower) and BBY payments to cover the difference between MSP and market prices. The current kharif season, however, has seen the area planted under rice increase to record levels in both Punjab (32.4 lh) and Haryana (16.4 lh). This has been primarily at the expense of cotton, whose acreage has plunged to 4.8 lh in Haryana and 1 lh in Punjab, from their corresponding 2023 levels of 6.7 lh and 2.1 lh. Farmers have diverted area from cotton due to not-so-remunerative prices as well as risk of pink bollworm insect pest attacks. Lowering price and yield risks in other crops vis-à-vis rice and wheat is something that the next government in Haryana, too, needs to focus on.
