Revival of Agriculture The striking finding is that the area under cultivation of major crops has shown significant growth only in this case of rice and maize, along with their yields, with the solitary exception of maize. The biggest fall is in cotton. The area is down by 6 percent annually and the output, every year on average, by 11 percent. There is truly a‘cotton crisis’ in the country today. There is a need to understand why the performance of the agricultural sector has been poor. What are the structural factors which have held back realization of the full agricultural potential of a country with one of the finest irrigation systems in the world? Table 20.3: Growth in Area and Output of Crops 2009-10 to 2014-15 Area 0.0 RICE Output 0.1 Area-0.1 WHEAT Output 0.9 Area-1.4 COTTON Output 1.6 Area 3.8 SUGARCANE Output 4.8 Area 4.0 MAIZE Output 10.4 Source: PES (Annual Growth Rate,%) 2014-15 to 2018-19 -0.7 0.7 -1.5 -0.6 -5.0 -8.7 -0.8 1.7 4.6 8.1 The first set of explanations relate to the slowdown in the increase in access to inputs, as shown in Table 20.4. First, the cropped area has remained largely unchanged since 2013­14, due to a lack of increase in availability of water. No major dam has been constructed over the last forty years. Initially, there was investment in tube wells for extraction of groundwater, but limits have been reached and the number of tube wells has remained largely unchanged since 2014-15. Table 20.4: Growth in The Availability of Agricultural Inputs(Annual Growth Rate,%) Cropped Area Water Availability (Canal water) Number of Tube wells Fertilizer Use Urea Total Credit Annual Production of Tractors 2000-01 to 2004-05 0.8 0.2 8.0 5.3 5.5 10.0 7.6 2004-05 to 2009-10 0.9-0.3 2.0 4.4 3.3 2.0 9.7 2009-10 to 2014-15-0.5 0.7 4.1-0.9-0.2 4.1-8.9 2014-15 to 2020-21 0.2-1.1 1.0 2.0 1.7-3.0-1.4 Source: PES Second, the use of fertilizer has shown little growth annually since 2014-15 of only 1.7 percent. The nutrient content has been characterized by the overuse of nitrogenous 195