Sagari Gupta
India imported 73.40 lakh tonnes of pulses in FY 2024-25, the highest in the country's recorded history, at a cost of USD 5.47 billion. The figure is confirmed by iGrain India, a commodity trade analyst firm, drawing on Union Commerce Ministry data. In the same year, Tamil Nadu's official land-use statistics recorded more than 17 lakh hectares under current fallows, other fallows, and cultivable wastelands. These two datasets describe the same structural failure in Indian agriculture and are almost never discussed in the same breath.
The national conversation on pulses stays fixed on import volumes, buffer stock decisions, and trade policy. Fallow lands sit in a separate administrative column inside state land-use reports. The result is a policy framework where import dependence and domestic underutilisation are treated as unrelated problems, even when they share the same geography.
What FY 2025-26 Data Shows
Pulse imports in FY 2025-26 have fallen sharply from the 2024-25 peak, but the structural problem has not been resolved. According to iGrain India data published in February 2026, imports during April-November 2025-26 fell 23 percent to 32.6 lakh tonnes, against 42.2 lakh tonnes in the same period the previous year. For the full year FY 2025-26, iGrain India estimates total imports at around 45 lakh tonnes. This is still well above the annual average of 24-27 lakh tonnes recorded between 2020-21 and 2022-23.
PIB trade data released by the Union Commerce Ministry in February 2026 shows pulse imports registering a 46.94 percent negative growth during April-January 2025-26 compared to the same period the previous year. The March 2026 PIB release records a further 21.81 percent decline in pulse import value for that month. In rupee terms, import expenditure for April-September 2025 fell 51 percent, from Rs 18,282 crore to Rs 8,908 crore, according to Commerce Ministry preliminary data.
The variety-wise breakdown from iGrain India is instructive. During April-November 2025-26, tur imports fell 5 percent to 9.4 lakh tonnes. Lentil imports dropped 24 percent to 4 lakh tonnes. Yellow pea imports fell 52 percent to 7.5 lakh tonnes, partly because a 30 percent import duty was imposed from November 2025. Urad imports rose 43 percent to 7.5 lakh tonnes. Duty-free access for tur and urad remained in place until March 31, 2026.
A fall in FY 2025-26 imports does not resolve the underlying problem. India still imported at record volumes across several consecutive years because domestic production persistently fell short of demand. The cumulative import bill for FY 2024-25 alone, at USD 5.47 billion, translates to approximately Rs 46,000 crore at prevailing exchange rates. The question is not whether imports dropped in 2025-26 but whether the conditions that drove them to 73 lakh tonnes have been corrected.
Why Production Fails to Keep Up
According to the Ministry of Agriculture's third advance estimate cited by APEDA, total pulse production in 2024-25 stood at 252.38 lakh tonnes. The NITI Aayog report 'Strategies and Pathways for Accelerating Growth in Pulses towards the Goal of Atmanirbharta' (2025) documents the production trajectory in detail: output fell from 273 lakh tonnes in 2021-22 to 260 lakh tonnes in 2022-23 and further to 242 lakh tonnes in 2023-24 before a partial recovery. The report attributes this to yield volatility driven by El Nino weather patterns, rainfed farming dependency across 80 percent of pulse area, and inadequate seed replacement rates.
According to the same NITI Aayog report, India's average pulse yield stands at 881 kg per hectare, against Canada's 2,200 kg per hectare and China's 1,815 kg per hectare. Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan confirmed these figures at a press conference in October 2025, stating the government aims to raise productivity to 1,130 kg per hectare under the new national mission. The yield gap is not new. It is structural and consistent across three decades of policy cycles.
The NITI Aayog report projects demand will reach 268 lakh tonnes by 2030 and 293 lakh tonnes by 2047 under a normative scenario. Against current production of 252.38 lakh tonnes, the near-term gap is approximately 16 lakh tonnes. This is the import bill, expressed in domestic production terms.
Pulses provide 20 to 25 percent of total protein intake in Indian diets, according to the National Institute of Nutrition. They remain the primary protein source for lower-income households. Large import volumes therefore expose domestic food security to global price volatility, shipping disruptions, and exchange-rate pressure. The import bill for FY 2024-25 alone was roughly three times the annual average of USD 1.7 billion seen between 2017-18 and 2022-23.
Tamil Nadu: The Unused Land
Tamil Nadu presents a specific and documented case within this national picture. According to Directorate of Economics and Statistics data, the state's normal pulse area is around 8.17 lakh hectares with annual production near 5 lakh tonnes across black gram, green gram, horse gram, red gram, and cowpea. Alongside this, state land-use statistics record more than 17 lakh hectares under fallow categories. Tamil Nadu's current pulse cultivation covers less than one-fifth of total recorded fallows.
The seasonal distribution of these fallows matters. In many districts, paddy cultivation during the samba season leaves residual soil moisture sufficient for short-duration pulses immediately after harvest. Farmers in Villupuram, Vellore, and Dindigul already grow black gram or cowpea on this moisture without additional irrigation. The cropping cycle runs between 90 and 120 days, fitting within the agricultural calendar before summer moisture depletion begins.
A field experiment published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems in 2024, conducted at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University's College and Research Institute in Madurai, documented this practice across the Cauvery delta zone. It confirmed that rice-fallow pulses cover approximately 2 lakh hectares in the delta region, with black gram and green gram sown 7-10 days before rice harvest under zero-tillage conditions using residual soil moisture. State DES records indicate that Tamil Nadu's total pulse cultivation on rice fallows reached nearly 3.07 lakh hectares during 2022-23, exceeding targets in several districts. Yield estimates in state and Ministry of Agriculture records range between 700 and 900 kg per hectare under dryland conditions.
For small and marginal farmers cultivating one or two hectares, this is an income-support mechanism during the rabi season with modest input costs. Even conservative expansion changes the production arithmetic. If only 20 percent of Tamil Nadu's recorded fallow area were brought under pulses, the state could add 3 to 3.5 lakh additional hectares. At existing DES yield averages, this could generate 2 to 3 lakh extra tonnes annually.
What National Assessments Find
The NITI Aayog report quantifies the national fallow land potential with precision. It finds that utilising just one-third of total rice fallow area across 10 states for pulse cultivation could increase domestic production by up to 2.85 million tonnes. Intercropping pulses with sugarcane in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra could unlock an additional 3 million hectares with a potential yield of 2.4 million tonnes. Optimising the rice-wheat cropping system in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Haryana could add a further 4 million hectares with a potential of 2.8 million tonnes. Taken together, the report estimates that these strategic interventions could unlock a total of 8.05 million tonnes of additional pulse production. The rice-fallow component is only one part of this potential, but it is the most immediately actionable because the land is already within farming households' operational cycle.
The NITI Aayog report is explicit that achieving this potential is not an agronomic question. It calls for a two-pillar strategy: horizontal expansion through utilizing untapped land resources including rice fallows, and vertical expansion through technology and improved practices. For horizontal expansion, the report recommends a cluster-based approach with incentives, assured prices, and pilot projects in high-potential states. This is a policy design prescription, not a technology gap.
The 2025 peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, authored by researchers across ICAR's Eastern Region Complex, ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil Science, Banaras Hindu University, and several other institutions, arrives at the same diagnosis from field evidence. The study finds that addressing the challenges of rice-fallow management requires coordinated efforts across research, policy development, infrastructure improvement, and community engagement. It further notes that programmes such as the Targeting Rice Fallow Areas scheme under RKVY have operational experience but lack the sustained institutional backing to scale. The ICAR researchers specifically flag that CACP advocacy for rice-fallow programming has not been matched by implementation coordination at the state level.
The Mission and What It Has Not Yet Fixed
In October 2025, the Union Cabinet approved the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses, a six-year programme running from 2025-26 to 2030-31 with a budgetary allocation of Rs 11,440 crore. The mission targets pulse production of 350 lakh tonnes and cultivation area of 310 lakh hectares by 2030-31. It includes 100 percent MSP procurement of tur, urad, and masoor for four years through NAFED and NCCF, distribution of 126 lakh quintals of certified seeds and 88 lakh free seed kits, and establishment of 1,000 post-harvest processing units with subsidies up to Rs 25 lakh each. Of the targeted 35 lakh hectare area expansion, the mission explicitly includes rice fallows.
For Tamil Nadu, the RKVY Pulse Village Scheme and RKVY-NFSM convergence models already directed cluster-based support toward rainfed and rice-fallow regions before the mission was announced. State records show approximately Rs 10 crore allocated during 2022-23 for pulse, millet, and oilseed expansion covering around 66,000 acres. These worked locally. They did not scale because they were treated as scheme activities rather than as a structural production strategy integrated into the state's food security planning.
The Directorate of Pulses Development's Annual Report for 2022-23 records that the Targeting Rice Fallow Area programme review, held under the chairmanship of the Agriculture Commissioner in September 2022, assessed state-wise rabi target progress but did not result in a revised area-expansion framework for Tamil Nadu tied to import substitution objectives. The administrative silo separating land-use planning from pulse import management remained intact.
The Water Productivity Dimension
Rice-fallow pulse cultivation adds crop output without proportionately increasing water extraction. This matters in districts like Villupuram and Dindigul where groundwater stress is already documented. India's agricultural policy still evaluates unused land primarily through irrigation potential. But the Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems study (2025) confirms that ICAR's Consortium Research Platform on Conservation Agriculture has identified soil and water management as critical factors limiting crop production in fallow areas, and finds that efficient natural resource management and integrated crop management practices are adequate for sustainable cropping intensification in rice-fallow systems. New infrastructure is not the binding constraint.
According to the 2025 ICAR-led Frontiers study, approximately 11.65 million hectares of land remain uncultivated after rice harvesting across India, with South Asia as a whole holding 22.3 million hectares of rice-fallow area. India contributes 88.3 percent of that total. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh account for a significant share of the non-eastern portion.
India's record pulse imports and Tamil Nadu's extensive fallow lands are not unrelated statistics. One reflects external dependence built over years of production shortfall. The other reflects internal underutilisation with a cultivation model already proven at district scale. The NITI Aayog report, the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses, and the ICAR field research all name the same solution. Whether it produces results in Tamil Nadu depends on whether land-use planning, agricultural extension, and procurement systems are brought into one operational framework directed at a single measurable outcome. That convergence has not happened yet.