Agriculture of India

Agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy because it feeds more than a billion people, supplies raw material to industries such as cotton, jute and sugar, and still employs a large share of the workforce. But before we study crops, we need the language of land: how a country records what its land is used for, and when in the year each crop is grown. Master these two things and every later question on crops becomes easy.

Two simple formulas hide behind many questions. Gross cropped area = net sown area + the area sown more than once (each sowing counted separately). Cropping intensity = (gross cropped area ÷ net sown area) × 100. A farmer who grows rice and then wheat on the same one hectare has a net sown area of 1 ha, a gross cropped area of 2 ha and a cropping intensity of 200 per cent. States with strong irrigation, such as Punjab, have the highest intensity.

India has three cropping seasons. The names come from Arabic: kharif means 'autumn' and rabi means 'spring'. Each season is decided by temperature and rainfall: Kharif crops love heat and the monsoon rain, Rabi crops need a cool winter to grow and warm days to ripen, and Zaid is the short, hot, dry gap in between which only irrigated, fast-growing crops can use.

Farming in India is not one thing. A small farmer in Bihar growing wheat for his family, a coffee estate in Kodagu selling beans abroad and a hill tribe in Nagaland burning a patch of forest to grow rice are all 'farming', but they differ in purpose, size, technology and the risk they take. Geographers sort these differences into types of farming. The two big families are subsistence farming (grown mainly to feed the family) and commercial farming (grown mainly to sell). Everything else is a variation on these two.

India's food basket stands on three legs: cereals (rice, wheat), millets and coarse grains (jowar, bajra, ragi, maize, barley) and pulses (gram, tur, moong, urad, masoor). Cereals give energy, pulses give protein, and millets give both plus the ability to survive drought. Each crop has a climate that suits it, a soil it likes and a belt of states where it is grown, and these three things explain almost every 'where is it grown' question.

Why are rice and wheat grown in different belts? Because their climates are opposite. Rice wants heat, humidity and standing water, so it dominates the wet east, the coasts and the deltas. Wheat wants a cool winter and a warm, dry spring, so it dominates the north-west plains and central India. Punjab and Haryana are special: with canal and tubewell irrigation they grow both rice (Kharif) and wheat (Rabi) on the same land, which is why they are called India's food bowl.

Food crops fill the stomach; cash crops fill the market. Sugarcane, cotton, jute, tea, coffee, rubber, oilseeds and tobacco are grown mainly to be sold, and most of them feed an industry: sugar mills, textile mills, jute mills, tea estates, oil mills. That is why these crops cluster where their climate, soil and a factory meet. Learn each crop as a small story: what it likes, where it grows, and which industry it feeds.

Why is the sugar mill built next to the cane field? Because sugarcane starts losing sucrose soon after it is cut, and bulky cane is costly to carry far. The mill therefore sits within a short distance of the field and crushes the cane quickly. The sugar industry is also seasonal, working only in the crushing season (roughly October to March in the north). That one idea answers many statement-type questions.

Horticulture means the growing of fruits, vegetables, flowers, spices, medicinal and aromatic plants and plantation crops such as coconut, arecanut, cashew and cocoa. These crops give more income per hectare than grain, which is why horticulture has been called the 'golden' route for farmers. India is among the world's top producers: as of the 2020s, it stands second after China in both fruits and vegetables.

Why does Kashmir grow saffron? Saffron needs cool, dry, well-drained soil and bright autumn sun. The Karewas, flat-topped terraces of old lake deposits in the Kashmir valley, drain well and are rich in minerals, and Pampore sits on them. The same Karewas also suit almond, walnut and apple.

India's rain is seasonal and uneven: most of it falls in four months and some years it fails. Irrigation is the artificial supply of water to crops, and it turns a gamble into a harvest. Which method a region uses is decided by geography, so ask two questions: is the land flat or rocky, and are the rivers perennial or seasonal? The answer tells you whether you will find canals, wells or tanks.

Why canals in the north and tanks in the south? In the north the plains are level and the soft alluvium is easy to dig, and perennial Himalayan rivers keep canals full. In the peninsula the land is rocky, so canals and wells are hard to dig, the rock does not let water seep in, and the rivers dry up in summer. So people built tanks to catch monsoon runoff.

Drip irrigation delivers water through pipes and emitters straight to the root zone, so very little is lost to evaporation or run-off. It is considered the most water-saving method and also suits fertiliser application (fertigation). Sprinkler irrigation suits uneven land and crops like wheat and pulses. Under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY, 2015), 'Per Drop More Crop' promotes both. The traditional bamboo drip system of Meghalaya regulates a hill stream down to a few drops a minute through bamboo pipes.

By the early 1960s India was importing wheat and living, as people said, 'ship to mouth'. Two failed monsoons in 1965 and 1966 made the danger plain. The country answered in three ways: new seeds and inputs (the Green Revolution), institutions that buy, store and price grain (FCI, CACP, MSP), and later cooperative and scheme-based efforts for milk, fish, oilseeds and income support. This topic joins all three.

Why did the Green Revolution bring regional imbalance? The new dwarf wheat and rice seeds gave high yields only with assured water and heavy fertiliser. Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh already had canals, tubewells, flat land and good procurement, so they gained first; rain-fed and poorly irrigated regions such as Bihar, eastern India and the Deccan gained little at first. Hence a regional disparity, and a crop disparity too, because wheat and rice gained but pulses and coarse grains did not.

MSP (Minimum Support Price) is the price at which the government is ready to buy a crop from farmers. Its purpose is to give farmers a guaranteed minimum return and protect them from distress sales to middlemen and from price crashes. The Union Cabinet announces MSP on the advice of CACP. As of the mid-2020s, MSP is announced for 22 crops: 14 Kharif, 6 Rabi and 2 commercial (jute and copra). Sugarcane has a separate Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP).