Area under rice cultivation has been declining rapidly 2004-05 and 2018-19?
Food security is closely related to crop yield; if the reduction in the yield continues, it intensifies global food crisis. The area under rice cultivation has been declining rapidly, according to an analysis in Wayanad district from 2004-05 to 2018-19 from the Department of Economics and Statistics, Kerala government. In 1985-86, nearly 30,000 hectare was cultivated; by 2009-10 it declined to 12,995 ha and to 7,760 by 2018-19. The area under cultivation during the winter season steadily decreased 27 per cent from 2013-14 to 2018-19; area under cultivation during summer decreased by 67 per cent in 2018-19 compared to 2013-14. An analysis carried out in ‘A handbook of transdisciplinary approaches to agro-biodiversity’ talked about a prominent change in Wayanad region from an agrarian economy centred on staple food production to a region of cash crops and plantations. Rainfall variability, along with other factors such as lack of water availability owing to an increase in runoff, as we