What does the term "Cereal Yield" refer to ?
1. The amount of cereal crops produced per unit area of harvested land
2. The total production of cereal crops in a given country
Select the correct answer

Question

What does the term "Cereal Yield" refer to ?
1. The amount of cereal crops produced per unit area of harvested land
2. The total production of cereal crops in a given country
Select the correct answer from the codes given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, Only statement 1. Yield is a ratio, not a total. The standard international definition, used by the FAO and carried in the World Bank's World Development Indicators as the series 'Cereal yield (kg per hectare)', reads: 'Cereal yield, measured as kilograms per hectare of harvested land, includes wheat, rice, maize, barley, oats, rye, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, and mixed grains.' Every element of statement 1 is in that sentence — an amount of cereal, divided by a unit of harvested land. Statement 2 describes a different variable altogether: total production, or output, which is what a country grows in aggregate and is reported in tonnes, not in tonnes per hectare. The two are linked by a simple identity — production = yield × area harvested — and that identity is exactly why they cannot be the same thing. A country can raise production without raising yield merely by sowing more land, and a country with a small cropped area can have the world's highest yields while producing very little in total. India makes the point domestically: Uttar Pradesh is the largest wheat-producing State by total output because of its sheer cropped area, while Punjab and Haryana return the higher wheat yields per hectare. One further detail worth carrying: the FAO counts only crops harvested for dry grain, excluding cereals cut for hay, green fodder or grazing, and it assigns a harvest to the calendar year in which most of it was gathered.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Accepting statement 2 collapses two distinct agricultural statistics into one. Yield is measured in kilograms or tonnes per hectare and describes the productivity of land; total production is measured in tonnes and describes the size of the harvest. Reporting agencies publish them as separate columns precisely because a rise in one does not imply a rise in the other.  (b) Statement 1 is the textbook definition, reproduced almost word for word in the FAO and World Bank indicator note, so it cannot be rejected. This option is chosen only by a candidate who suspects the phrasing 'per unit area of harvested land' of being a trap; in fact 'harvested land' is the technically precise wording, because area sown and area actually harvested differ when a crop fails.  (d) This is the exact inversion of the definition — it hands the name 'yield' to total production. It is the most tempting wrong answer because in everyday Indian usage 'a good yield' loosely means 'a big harvest'; in statistics it always means output per hectare. Total cereal production is simply called production or output.

Concept: Agricultural performance is reported through three different quantities that beginners routinely merge. Area is the land under a crop, measured in hectares. Production (output) is the total quantity harvested, measured in tonnes. Yield (productivity) is production divided by area, measured in kilograms or tonnes per hectare — it is the intensive measure, and the one that tells you how efficiently land, water, seed and fertiliser are being used. Because production = yield × area, growth in output can come from extending cultivation or from raising yield, and only the second is available to a country like India where cultivable land has stopped expanding.

State PCS 2024 Q48 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q48 — Economy PYQ with Answer