Growth and Variability of Major Food Crops Production in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Abstract

The present study was undertaken to investigate the growth and variability in major food crops production of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The study was based on secondary data, covers a period of about 30 years i.e. starting from 1984-85 to 2013-14, Whereas, the growth models has been employed to fit the best growth model and Cuddy Della Vella Index was applied to find variability in major food crops production i.e. wheat, maize, sugarcane and rice. Based on the results of analyzed data, it was found that in major food crops (wheat, maize, sugarcane, rice) Production, the growth models i.e.  Cubic growth model, power growth model, cubic growth model, cubic growth model respectively were found suitable, based on the R² criteria and fitted trend line. After selecting best fitted model for each major food crop, the growth rate was calculated by using the selected fitted models which were found to be 10.97%, 8.00%, 45.31% and 1.19% respectively.  Moreover, the variability for each major food crop production was found to be 1.53%, 1.23%, 0.44% and 0.79% respectively.