West Bengal ranked first in the country in vegetable production in 2018-19, as per a report released by the Ministry of Agriculture recently. This comes in the wake of the state bagging the Krishi Karman award for six years since 2011-12. Last year, the award was won for maize production. Now, the state has managed to edge out Uttar Pradesh, which was the largest vegetable producer in the previous year.

According to the report, West Bengal, having the highest cultivable area, produced 29.55 million tonnes (mt) of vegetables last year against 27.70 mt in the year before. Ranking second in the list of vegetable producers is UP which produced 27.71 mt in 2018-19 from 28.32 mt the previous year. Madhya Pradesh and Bihar have ranked third and fourth producing 17.77 mt and 17.0 mt respectively.

Gujarat ranks fifth with a production of 12.55 mt. The report further stated that Bengal accounted for 15.9 per cent of the country’s total vegetable production in 2018-19, UP produced 14.9 per cent while other producers were Madhya Pradesh (9.6 per cent), Bihar (nine per cent) and Gujarat (6.8 per cent).

Applauding the state’s achievement, agriculture minister Asish Banerjee said that under the guidance of chief minister Mamata Banerjee the state has taken up a host of measures to help farmers to increase production as well as augment their income.

An official of the state agriculture department said that Bengal had made remarkable progress in this sector as official records have revealed that the Agriculture and Allied Sector Expenditure has registered a nine-time hike in the last eight years from Rs 3,029 crore (in 2010-11) to Rs 28,302 crore (in 2018-19).

Again, the average annual income of farmers has seen a three-time increase from Rs 91,000 (in 2011) to Rs 2.91 lakh (in 2019) and 69 lakh Kisan Credit Cards were distributed to farmers in 2019 compared to 27 lakh in 2011. In India, the major vegetable crops grown, which account for 11.2 per cent of global vegetable production, are potato, tomato, onion, brinjal, cabbage, cauliflower, peas, and okra.

In the area of fruit production, Andhra Pradesh continued to hold on to the top position with 17.61 mt, followed by Maharashtra (10.82 mt) and UP (10.65 mt).