Temporal Variation of Maize Production in North Eastern Region of India: An Inter-State Comparative Study

Abstract

This paper investigates the temporal variations in area, production and yield of maize in the states of north eastern region of India during the period 1975-76 to 2014-15 which has been in turn divided into four equal decades. Among the four decades, growth rate performance of maize in the fourth decade (2005-06 to 2014-15) may be regarded well than the previous three decades which are almost similar and lower than that of the fourth decade. Among the states during the decadal study periods, Nagaland shows better performance in production growth of maize followed by Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Tripura while Assam, Manipur, Mizoram and Sikkim are running behind. The decomposition analysis has revealed that sources of output growth in the states of the region are due to either area expansion (52%) or yield improvements (44%) except in few
cases where there are interaction effects (4%). Instability index in third decade (1995-96 to 2004-05) shows lowest in area, production and yield while fourth decade (2005-06 to 2014-15) is most fluctuated. Better growth rate performance but high instability in the region in fourth decade is due to the significant increase in area, production and yield of almost all the states specially Assam in the last few years of the decade. Among the states Manipur followed by Mizoram, Tripura and Nagaland depicts comparatively higher instability in area, production and yield in all the four decades while Sikkim followed by Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam has registered comparatively more stable. Though area, production and productivity of maize in north eastern region have shown a steady upward trend in every period of the study, due to dramatic increase of maize demand for human consumption as well as animal and poultry feed the current trend
appears unable to keep pace.