Long-term Agricultural Growth and Crop Shifts in India and Pakistan

Based on a production dataset that corresponds to the current borders of India and Pakistan for theperiod c.1900-2000 and a district-level dataset from West Punjab for a similar period, this paper investigatesthe performance of agriculture in these regions. The growth records of agricultural production andshifts in crop mix indices show that changes in aggregate land productivity can be associated structurallywith inter-crop and inter-district reallocations of land use. In the studied regions, cropping patterns ofsubsistence agriculture changed substantially, with a rising concentration of crop acreage in districtswith higher productivity and shifts to more lucrative crops. These changes reflected comparative advantageand contributed to the improvement of aggregate land productivity. The crop concentration indiceswere at their highest levels in the early 2000s both in India and in Pakistan, showing the effects of agriculturalliberalization policies and farmers’ response to these policies