Nurturing horticulture

Constraints in the sector must be addressed

Going by the agriculture ministry’s latest crop assessment, the production of fruit, vegetables and other horticultural products rose to a new high of 331 million tonnes in 2020-21, outpacing the food grain output of 306 million tonnes for the ninth year in a row. This trend, notably, has endured despite low developmental effort, public funding, and policy support to horticulture in comparison to grain crops. Measures like minimum support prices are unavailable for fruit and vegetables, though most of these crops are grown by resource-poor small landholders with a meagre risk-bearing capacity. Yet, the uptrend in production remained intact even