Agriculture

Why This Matters

Look at your plate. The rice or roti. The dal. The vegetables. The sugar in your tea. The cotton in your shirt. Almost all of it began in a field somewhere in India. Farming is called a primary activity. A primary activity is one that takes things straight from nature, like growing crops or catching fish. Farming gives us most of the food we eat. It also gives raw material to industries like cotton cloth, sugar and jute. About two-thirds of India’s population depends on farming to earn a living.

This chapter is the story of how India farms. But it is not one story. It is many. Picture three different farmers. A family in the hills of Assam clears a small patch of forest, burns it, and grows just enough to eat. A farmer in Punjab pumps water from a tubewell, sows high-yielding wheat, and sells the whole crop in the market. A tea estate in Darjeeling hires hundreds of workers who pick tea leaves all year for a factory. Same country. Completely different ways of growing.

Understanding farming helps you understand India itself. It explains why some regions are rich and others are poor. It explains why the whole country waits anxiously for the monsoon. It even explains why a small change in the price of wheat can shake the whole economy. By the end of this chapter, you will be able to match the right crop to the right season, soil and region. That is exactly what exams ask you to do.

The Big Idea

Indian farming goes from subsistence farming (crops grown to feed the farmer’s own family) to commercial farming (crops grown to sell). A plantation is a large commercial type. The year has three cropping seasons: kharif (the monsoon season), rabi (the winter season) and zaid (a short summer season). Each major crop needs its own kind of temperature, rainfall, soil and region. Most farmers still depend on the monsoon, which is risky. So the government has brought in technological and institutional reforms — like the Green Revolution, a minimum support price, cheap loans and crop insurance — to make farming safer and to grow more food.

Two simple questions unlock almost this whole chapter. First, “Why is the crop grown?” (to eat, or to sell?). Second, “What does the crop need?” (which season, how much heat and rain, what soil, which region?). Keep those two questions in your mind. The long lists of crops and states will stop feeling like random facts.

Let’s Break It Down

Types of farming

Over hundreds of years, the way India farms has changed. It changed because of the physical environment (the climate and the soil), the technology people had, and the customs and habits of different communities. We can group the methods of farming by their main purpose: is the crop grown to eat, or to sell? Figure 4.1 below is a tree that branches out from that one question.

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First, what is subsistence farming? It means farming where the farmer grows just enough food to feed their own family. Very little is left over to sell. There are two kinds.

Primitive subsistence farming is still done in a few small areas. It uses a method called slash-and-burn (or shifting) agriculture. Here is how it works. Farmers clear a small patch of land and burn the plants on it. The ash makes the soil rich for a while. They then grow cereals and food crops to feed the family. They use simple tools like the hoe, the dao and digging sticks. The work is done by family members or the whole community. After a few years the soil loses its richness. So the farmers move to a fresh patch of land. They leave the old patch alone, and over time nature slowly makes it fertile again. This kind of farming depends fully on the monsoon, the natural richness of the soil, and the local environment. The farmers do not add fertilisers. Because of this, the harvest is small (low productivity). This farming has different local names across India. It is called jhumming in the north-eastern states (Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland), Pamlou in Manipur, Dipa in Bastar (Chhattisgarh), Bewar or Dahiya in Madhya Pradesh, Podu or Penda in Andhra Pradesh, Kumari in the Western Ghats, Khil in the Himalayan belt, and Kuruwa in Jharkhand.

Intensive subsistence farming is done in places where many people live on a small amount of land (high population pressure). It uses a lot of human labour. Farmers add plenty of chemicals and irrigation water to get as much output as possible from tiny plots. There is a problem, though. By the right of inheritance, land is divided among the children in each new generation. So the plots keep getting smaller and smaller. The plots become too small to earn a proper living. Even so, farmers keep growing crops on them, because they have no other way to earn.

Commercial farming is grown mainly to sell in the market, not just to eat. It uses larger amounts of modern inputs. These include high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds (special seeds that give a bigger harvest), chemical fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides. This gives a high output. One important point: the same crop can be commercial in one place and subsistence in another. For example, rice is a commercial crop in Punjab and Haryana (grown to sell) but a subsistence crop in Odisha (grown to eat).

Plantation is a kind of commercial farming. Here, a single crop is grown over a very large area called an estate. A plantation is where farming meets industry. It uses a lot of money (capital), and workers who come from other places (migrant labour). The whole crop is sold as raw material for industry — for example, tea leaves go to a tea factory. Important Indian plantation crops are tea, coffee, rubber, sugarcane and banana. For example, tea is grown in Assam and North Bengal, and coffee in Karnataka. For plantations to work well, there must be a good network of roads, transport and communication to link the estates, the factories and the markets.

The idea that one crop can be two types at once trips many students up. Here is a quick check to see if it has clicked.

The cropping seasons: rabi, kharif and zaid

The seasons only make sense once you remember India’s weather cycle, so let us bring back what you already know about the monsoon and the seasons that follow it.

A cropping season is simply a part of the year when a particular set of crops is grown. India has three cropping seasons. The easy way to remember each one is to learn two things about it: when the crop is sown and when it is harvested, plus a couple of example crops. (“Sown” means the seeds are put in the soil. “Harvested” means the ready crop is cut and collected.) Figure 4.2 below lays the three seasons out as bars along one year, so they stop overlapping in your head.

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The table below pins down all three at once — when each is sown, when it is harvested, and which crops to name for it in an exam.

Rabi crops are sown in winter and harvested in summer. Some rain falls in winter from storms called western temperate cyclones. This rain helps rabi crops grow well. The Green Revolution (a programme that brought modern seeds and methods) helped rabi crops like wheat grow much better in Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and parts of Rajasthan.

Kharif crops are sown when the monsoon begins (the “onset of the monsoon”). They are harvested in September and October. In Assam, West Bengal and Odisha, farmers even grow three crops of paddy (rice) in one year. These three are called Aus, Aman and Boro.

Zaid is the short summer season that comes in between rabi and kharif. (Sugarcane does not fit neatly into a season. It is special, because it takes almost a whole year to grow.)

The two main seasons are the easiest thing in this chapter to mix up, so watch out for this common slip before you go on.

Major crops — the food grains

Now let us look at the crops one by one. For each crop, the exam wants you to know five things: its type or season, the temperature it needs, the rainfall it needs, the soil it grows in, and the main states that produce it.

One of those five things is soil, and crop names keep mentioning the same few soils, so let us refresh them first.

Before the long list, here is the secret behind it. A crop’s conditions are not random rules to memorise. Each condition is there because the plant itself needs it to survive and fill its harvest. Once you see why a crop wants what it wants, the list stops being a list. It becomes common sense.

Think about each plant as a living thing with its own habits. Rice is a water-loving plant. Its roots actually sit in standing water for the whole season, like a plant in a pond. So it must have lots of rain (over 100 cm) or flooded fields from irrigation. And it grows in the warm, wet monsoon because heat above 25°C lets it grow fast and fill its grain. That is why rice is a kharif crop of the rainy plains.

Wheat is the opposite kind of plant. It wants a cool season while it is growing, because cool weather lets the plant build itself slowly and store food in the grain. But then it wants bright, warm sun while the grain ripens, because that warm dry sun dries and hardens the grain so it is ready to cut. A cool grow, then a warm ripen — that is exactly the winter-to-summer pattern of the rabi season.

Cotton likes black soil because black soil holds a little moisture between the rains, so the plant never dries out. It needs lots of sunny, frost-free days because the cotton balls (called bolls) need long warm sun to open up, and even one frost would kill them. Tea is fussy in a different way: its roots rot if water just sits around them. So it must grow on a slope with well-drained soil, where the heavy rain quickly drains away. The plant gets plenty of water, but never sits in it.

Figure 4.3 below lines up each condition with the plant’s need behind it. Read each row as “this condition exists because the plant needs that”.

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Rice is the staple food of most Indians (the staple food is the main food people eat every day). India grows the second largest amount of rice in the world, after China. Rice is a kharif crop. It needs a high temperature, above 25°C. It also needs high humidity (lots of moisture in the air) and more than 100 cm of rain in a year. In drier areas, farmers grow rice using irrigation (water brought to the fields through canals or pumps). Rice grows in the flat plains and river deltas of north and north-eastern India and along the coasts. Thanks to canals and tubewells, it is now also grown in the low-rainfall states of Punjab, Haryana and western UP.

Wheat is the second most important cereal in India. It is the main food crop of the north and north-west. Wheat is a rabi crop. It needs a cool season while growing and bright sunshine when the grain is ripening. It needs 50 to 75 cm of rain, spread evenly through the season. Wheat grows mainly in two big areas: the Ganga–Satluj plains in the north-west, and the black-soil region of the Deccan. Major states: Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan.

Millets are jowar, bajra and ragi. People call them coarse grains, but they are actually very healthy. For example, ragi is rich in iron, calcium and other micronutrients.

Rice and wheat are the two crops that exams compare most often. It helps to put their needs side by side. Figure 4.4 below does this; as you will see, they want almost opposite conditions.

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Here every major food grain sits in one table, with its season, the conditions it needs and its main states — a ready-made revision sheet.

Maize is used as both food and fodder (fodder is food for farm animals). It is a kharif crop, but in Bihar it is also grown in the rabi season. It needs a temperature of 21–27°C and old alluvial soil. HYV seeds, fertilisers and irrigation have helped farmers grow more of it.

Pulses include tur (arhar), urad, moong, masur, peas and gram. India grows the most pulses in the world and also eats the most pulses in the world. Pulses are the main source of protein for people who eat vegetarian food. They need less water. Pulses are leguminous crops, which means they take nitrogen from the air and put it back into the soil. So all pulses except arhar restore the richness of the soil (they make the soil fertile again). Because of this, farmers grow pulses in rotation with other crops. (“Rotation” means growing pulses one season and another crop the next, so the soil stays healthy.)

But it is easy to stretch this nitrogen idea to crops it does not cover, so here is exactly where the line falls.

Cash and other crops

A cash crop is a crop grown mainly to sell for money, not just to eat. Sugarcane and oilseeds are good examples.

Sugarcane is a tropical and subtropical crop. It needs a hot, humid climate (21–27°C). It needs 75–100 cm of rain. Where there is less rain, farmers use irrigation. It can grow on many kinds of soil. It needs a lot of hand labour, from sowing right up to harvesting. India grows the second largest amount of sugarcane in the world, after Brazil. Sugarcane is the source of sugar, gur (jaggery), khandsari and molasses. Major states: Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Punjab and Haryana.

Oilseeds are crops whose seeds give us cooking oil. They cover about 12% of India’s cropped area. In 2020, India grew the second largest amount of groundnut in the world, after China. The main oilseeds are groundnut, mustard, coconut, sesamum (til), soyabean, castor, cotton seeds, linseed and sunflower. Most of these give oil we cook with. Some are used to make soap and cosmetics. The seasons differ. Groundnut is a kharif crop, and it makes up about half of India’s oilseeds. Linseed and mustard are rabi crops. Sesamum is a kharif crop in the north and a rabi crop in the south. Castor is grown in both seasons.

Tea is an example of plantation farming. It is a beverage crop, which means a crop used to make a drink. The British brought tea-growing to India. Tea needs a tropical or sub-tropical climate. It needs deep, fertile, well-drained soil that is rich in humus (humus is the dark, rich part of soil made from rotted plants). It needs a warm, moist climate all year with no frost. It also needs frequent showers spread evenly through the year. Tea is labour-intensive, which means it needs a lot of cheap, skilled workers. The leaves are processed inside the tea garden itself, so they stay fresh. Major states: Assam, the Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri hills of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Coffee is another beverage crop. India’s Arabica variety is in great demand around the world. This variety first came from Yemen. It was first grown in India on the Baba Budan Hills. Coffee-growing in India is found only in the Nilgiri hills, in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Horticulture means the growing of fruits and vegetables. In 2020, India grew the second largest amount of fruits and vegetables in the world, after China. India grows both tropical and temperate fruits. Some examples are mangoes (Maharashtra, AP, UP, West Bengal), oranges (Nagpur), bananas (Kerala, Tamil Nadu), and apples and walnuts (J&K, Himachal Pradesh). India also grows vegetables like pea, cauliflower, onion, tomato and potato.

Rubber is mainly an equatorial crop. (It can also be grown in tropical and sub-tropical areas under special conditions.) It needs a moist, humid climate with more than 200 cm of rain. It needs a temperature above 25°C. Rubber is an important raw material for industry. It is grown mainly in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and the Garo Hills of Meghalaya.

Fibre crops

A fibre crop is a crop that gives us thread to make cloth, rope and similar things. The four major fibres are cotton, jute, hemp and natural silk. The first three come from plants grown in the soil. Silk is different. It comes from the cocoons of silkworms. These worms are fed on mulberry leaves. The rearing of silkworms is called sericulture.

Cotton is the main raw material for the cotton cloth (textile) industry. India is believed to be the original home of the cotton plant. India grows the second largest amount of cotton in the world, after China. Cotton grows well in the drier parts of the black (cotton) soil of the Deccan plateau. It needs a high temperature, light rain or irrigation, 210 frost-free days, and bright sunshine. (Frost-free days are days cold enough to harm the plant.) It is a kharif crop. It takes 6 to 8 months to grow fully. Major states: Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana and UP.

Jute is called the golden fibre, because of its shiny golden-brown colour. It grows on fertile, well-drained soils in flood plains. (A flood plain is the flat land beside a river. Each year the floods bring fresh soil and make it fertile again.) Jute needs a high temperature while it grows. Major states: West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Odisha and Meghalaya. Jute is used to make gunny bags, mats, ropes, yarn and carpets.

Cotton and jute sit together as fibre crops, but their growing needs pull in opposite directions — and that contrast is a favourite trap.

Technological and institutional reforms

A reform is a change made to improve something. More than 60% of India’s people work in farming. But most farmers still depend on the monsoon and the natural richness of the soil. This is risky, especially as the population keeps growing. So India brought in reforms of two kinds: institutional reforms and technological reforms.

Institutional reforms change the system of farming and who owns the land. Most of these came after Independence. They included collectivisation, consolidation of holdings, cooperation, and the ending (abolition) of the zamindari system. (Consolidation of holdings means joining a farmer’s many scattered small plots into one bigger plot.) Land reform was the main focus of the First Five Year Plan. Later steps were added too. These included crop insurance to protect farmers against drought, flood, cyclone, fire and disease. They also included Grameen banks, cooperative societies and banks that gave farmers loans at low interest. Two more steps were the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) and the Personal Accident Insurance Scheme (PAIS).

Technological reforms change the methods and tools of farming. The big ones came in the 1960s and 1970s. The Green Revolution brought a package of technology together — HYV seeds, fertilisers and irrigation. The White Revolution (Operation Flood) did the same for milk production. These reforms grew much more food.

But why did this package grow so much more food? The clever part is that the three inputs only work as a team. They are useless on their own. Here is why. HYV seeds (high-yielding variety seeds) can give a much bigger harvest than ordinary seeds — but only if they are well fed and well watered. They are “hungry” and “thirsty” plants. Plant them in poor, dry soil and they grow no better than ordinary seeds. That is where the other two come in. Chemical fertiliser is the extra plant food in the soil. It gives the hungry HYV seeds the nutrients they need to grow their full, big crop. And irrigation gives steady water from canals and tubewells, so the thirsty crop does not have to wait for an uncertain monsoon that may come late or fail.

So picture it like this. The seed has the potential for a huge harvest. The fertiliser feeds that potential. The water keeps it alive every single day. Put all three together on the same field, and a small harvest becomes a large one. Take away any one of them, and the team breaks — that is the key idea. Figure 4.5 below shows the three inputs combining.

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But the growth happened only in a few regions, not everywhere. So in the 1980s and 1990s, the government brought in a wide land-development programme. This combined both technological and institutional reforms.

Sometimes farmers are cheated by speculators and middlemen (people who buy crops cheap from farmers and sell them dear, keeping the profit). To protect farmers, the government announces a minimum support price (MSP). This is a fixed price the government promises to pay for important crops, so the price cannot fall below it. The government also fixes fair prices and buys crops directly. It runs special weather bulletins and farm programmes on radio and TV to help farmers.

There are a lot of reform names to keep straight, so Figure 4.6 below sorts them into the two families — methods versus system.

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One of those reforms, the MSP, comes up again and again in exams, so make sure you can say what it is for.

Bhoodan–Gramdan: Vinoba Bhave was Gandhiji’s spiritual heir. He went on a padyatra (a journey on foot) to spread the idea of gram swarajya (village self-rule). At Pochampally in Telangana, a man named Shri Ram Chandra Reddy gave away 80 acres of his land for 80 landless villagers. This gift of land was called Bhoodan (“gift of land”). Later, some zamindars gave away whole villages. This was called Gramdan (“gift of a village”). The land changed hands peacefully, with no fighting. So the movement is known as the Bloodless Revolution.

Food security and globalisation

So many Indians depend on farming. So food security is very important. Food security means making sure enough food is grown, and that this food reaches everyone who needs it. The reforms above all help with this. Guaranteed prices, loans (credit), insurance and better seeds all help keep the country fed.

Globalisation means countries trading and connecting freely with each other across the world. This is not new for Indian farming. Under British rule, India already sent out (exported) cotton, spices and indigo. Indian farmers were often forced to grow cash crops back then. Today, after the reforms of the 1990s, Indian farmers face a new problem. Cheaper food comes in from rich countries (imports). This food is often subsidised, which means those countries help their farmers with money, so they can sell it cheaply. This can pull down the prices Indian farmers get. To compete, Indian farming needs better technology, organic farming, and value addition (turning a raw crop into a finished product worth more, like making jam from fruit). This turns the challenge into a chance to grow. India’s spices, tea and coffee are still proud exports, famous for their quality.

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Summary

• Agriculture is a primary activity that feeds India and supplies industrial raw material; about two-thirds of the population depends on it.
• Primitive subsistence farming = slash-and-burn (jhumming), simple tools, family labour, monsoon-dependent, low yield, grown to feed the family.
• Intensive subsistence farming = high population pressure, labour-intensive, lots of irrigation and fertiliser on small holdings.
• Commercial farming = modern inputs (HYV seeds, fertilisers, pesticides), grown to sell; plantation (tea, coffee, rubber, sugarcane) is a large-scale commercial type linking agriculture and industry.
• Three seasons: rabi (sown winter Oct–Dec, harvested Apr–Jun — wheat, gram, mustard); kharif (sown with monsoon Jun–Jul, harvested Sep–Oct — paddy, maize, cotton, jute); zaid (short summer — watermelon, muskmelon, cucumber).
• Food grains: rice (kharif staple, above 25°C, rainfall above 100 cm), wheat (rabi, cool season, 50–75 cm), millets (jowar, bajra, ragi — nutritious coarse grains), maize, and pulses (protein source; leguminous, fix nitrogen, grown in rotation).
• Other crops: sugarcane (gur, sugar, molasses), oilseeds (groundnut etc.), tea and coffee (plantation beverages), horticulture, rubber (equatorial, over 200 cm rain); fibres — cotton (dry black soil of the Deccan) and jute (the golden fibre, wet flood plains of West Bengal).
• Reforms: Green Revolution and White Revolution (technological); land reform, consolidation, abolition of zamindari, crop insurance, KCC, PAIS and MSP (institutional) — all to raise output and secure farmers’ incomes; globalisation brings both competition from cheap imports and export opportunities for India’s spices, tea and coffee.

What’s Next

You now know what India grows, and how. But farms, factories and homes all need power and materials to run. They need the minerals we dig from the earth. They need the energy that drives the economy. In Chapter 5 — Minerals and Energy Resources, you will learn where India’s iron, copper, coal and petroleum come from. You will see how they are saved (conserved), and how India is moving towards renewable energy. The link to this chapter is direct. The tractors, tubewells, fertiliser factories and transport that make modern farming possible all depend on those minerals and energy.