MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 20 of 100

Correct — option (3), 2,882 kilograms per hectare for rice and 3,559 for wheat. These are the yield figures for 2023-24 in the Ministry of Agriculture's estimates, and they sit consistently with the production side of the same set of estimates, which put rice at 137.82 million tonnes and wheat at 113.29 million tonnes, both records at the time, within a total foodgrain output of 332.22 million tonnes. Yield is simply production divided by area, so the three numbers move together and a candidate who remembers any two can sanity-check the third. Now look at what can be reasoned rather than recalled. Every option pairs a smaller rice figure with a larger wheat figure, which reflects a real and durable fact — India's national wheat yield runs well above its rice yield, because wheat is concentrated in the irrigated north-west while rice is grown across an enormous range of conditions, including very large rainfed areas in the east where yields are low. Since all four options respect that ordering, it discriminates nothing, and the item turns entirely on magnitude. Here two options can be pushed out on scale alone. The figures in option (1), 3,282 and 4,559, are of the order of the best-performing states rather than of the national average, and no national rice yield of that size has been reported. The figures in option (4), 2,581 and 3,259, belong to an earlier stage of the trend; Indian yields have risen steadily and a figure of that size understates 2023-24. That leaves options (2) and (3) within a couple of hundred kilograms of each other, which is where precise recall becomes unavoidable — and it is the standard shape of a data question: two implausible values to be eliminated by judgment, and two plausible ones to be separated by memory.

• (1)3282 and 4559 kg — Far too high for a national average on both counts. Yields of this order are what the best-performing states achieve — the irrigated tracts of Punjab and Haryana with assured water, high fertiliser use and short-duration varieties — and a national figure has to average those states together with the large rainfed rice areas of the east, where yields are a fraction of them. The check worth internalising is that a national average is always pulled down by the weakest regions, so any option that looks like a state-level best performance is almost certainly not a national number. Applying that test alone removes this option without recalling anything about 2023-24.
• (2)2681 and 3460 kg — The serious distractor, and the reason this question cannot be fully reasoned out. Both figures are of the right order for an Indian national average in the recent past — they respect the rice-below-wheat relationship and they are within the plausible band — and they are simply about two hundred kilograms per hectare short of the 2023-24 estimates for each crop. Numbers of this kind belong to the trend a few years earlier, and the gap matters because Indian yields have been rising steadily rather than fluctuating around a fixed level. Separating this option from the correct one requires the actual figures for the year named in the stem, which is exactly what the setter intended.
• (4)2581 and 3259 kg — Too low for 2023-24, and low enough to be eliminated by a candidate who knows the direction of the trend rather than the level. India's per-hectare yields in both crops have climbed through successive years on the back of irrigation expansion, better varieties and higher input use, and 2023-24 was a record year for both rice and wheat production — 137.82 and 113.29 million tonnes respectively. A record production year sitting on a yield figure lower than the recent trend would be internally inconsistent unless sown area had expanded sharply, which it had not. Reading the option against the production record is the check that disposes of it.

Yield, area and production are the three quantities every agricultural data question is built from, and they are locked together: production equals area multiplied by yield, so any two determine the third and a candidate who carries one pair can reconstruct the rest. For India's two principal foodgrains the structural picture is stable enough to be memorised as a shape rather than as a table. Wheat's national yield exceeds rice's, because wheat is grown in a compact and heavily irrigated north-western belt under a fairly uniform rabi regime, while rice is grown from Punjab to Kerala to Assam under conditions that include very large rainfed areas with low and uncertain yields. In absolute production, rice exceeds wheat, because rice occupies a much larger area. Uttar Pradesh is the largest wheat-producing state and West Bengal the largest rice-producing state, while Punjab and Haryana lead on yield in both crops — which is why national averages always look modest beside the numbers a candidate remembers from state-level reading. India ranks second in the world in both rice and wheat production, behind China. The official numbers come from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, which issues successive advance estimates through the year before publishing final estimates.

Two habits make data questions tractable. The first is the plausibility band. Before reaching for memory, ask whether each figure could be a national average at all: state-level best performances are the commonest form of wrong option, because they are real numbers that a candidate has genuinely seen. Here the highest pair is of that kind and can be dismissed on judgment alone. The second habit is direction of travel. Indian yields have been rising rather than oscillating, so an option that is low relative to the recent trend is unlikely for a named recent year — especially one in which production set records. Applying both tests reduced a four-way question to a two-way one, and the last step needed recall. That is the ceiling of reasoning on this question type, and it is worth knowing where that ceiling is: with two options surviving and a quarter of the marks deducted for an error, attempting is a defensible bet on a two-mark question, whereas a blind four-way guess is not. The other lesson is about sourcing. The Ministry's estimates for a crop year are revised more than once, so a question naming a year is asking for the settled figures, not for a number half-remembered from a news report during the season.

• The Ministry of Agriculture's estimates for 2023-24 give per-hectare yields of 2,882 kilograms for rice and 3,559 kilograms for wheat — the figures the Commission's key records for this question.
• The same set of estimates puts rice production for 2023-24 at 137.82 million tonnes and wheat at 113.29 million tonnes, both records at the time, within a total foodgrain output of 332.22 million tonnes.
• Production equals area multiplied by yield, so any two of the three quantities determine the third — the arithmetic that lets a candidate check a remembered yield against a remembered production figure.
• India's national wheat yield exceeds its rice yield because wheat is concentrated in the irrigated north-western belt under a uniform rabi regime, while rice is grown across widely varying conditions including large rainfed areas of the east where yields are low.
• Uttar Pradesh is the largest wheat-producing state and West Bengal the largest rice-producing state, while Punjab and Haryana lead on yield in both crops; India ranks second in the world in the production of both rice and wheat, behind China.

• Mistaking a state-level yield for a national average: figures from Punjab or Haryana are real numbers a candidate has seen, and they are the commonest form of wrong option in this question type
• Ignoring the direction of the trend — Indian yields have risen steadily, so an option well below the recent level is unlikely for a named recent year, especially one of record production
• Assuming the rice figure must exceed the wheat figure because rice production is larger; production is larger because the area is larger, while wheat's per-hectare yield is higher
• Quoting a number from an in-season news report when the question names a crop year, since the Ministry revises its estimates more than once before they are final

MPSC includes a steady quota of national and state agricultural data questions with four numerical options, and the option set is usually built so that two values can be eliminated on plausibility and two cannot. That design is worth recognising, because it tells you how far reasoning will carry you and when the item becomes a memory test. The state-level versions of these questions are drawn from the Economic Survey of Maharashtra and the national ones from the Ministry's estimates, so the reading is defined and finite. UPSC asks agriculture through policy and process — cropping patterns, minimum support prices, irrigation, the consequences of the Green Revolution — and almost never asks a bare yield figure, so the numbers themselves are MPSC-specific preparation. The efficient compromise is to carry the latest production and yield figures for rice and wheat, the leading states in production and in yield, and India's world rank in each crop, which together answer most of what the state paper asks.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following statements about rice and wheat in India is correct with reference to recent official estimates ?

  • (a)Rice has both a larger area and a higher per-hectare yield than wheat
  • (b)Rice has a larger area and a larger production, but wheat has a higher per-hectare yield
  • (c)Wheat has a larger area and a larger production than rice
  • (d)Wheat has a larger area but a lower per-hectare yield than rice

  Answer(b) Rice has a larger area and a larger production, but wheat has a higher per-hectare yield — rice occupies far more land and yields more grain in total, while wheat, concentrated in the irrigated north-western belt, does better per hectare than a rice crop that includes large low-yielding rainfed areas in the east.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  According to the final estimates for the crop year 2023-24, India's total foodgrain production was closest to which of the following figures ?

  • (a)About 275 million tonnes
  • (b)About 300 million tonnes
  • (c)About 332 million tonnes
  • (d)About 375 million tonnes

  Answer(c) About 332 million tonnes — the final estimates for 2023-24 put total foodgrain production at 332.22 million tonnes, within which rice accounted for 137.82 million tonnes and wheat 113.29 million tonnes, both records at the time. The figure is worth carrying because production, area and yield questions on the same crop year are all quarried from this one set of estimates.