India Agriculture

Mixed Cropping: 

1. One of the most distinctive features of Indian agriculture, particularly in rain-fed areas, is mixed cropping. In certain cases, four to five crops are cultivated in the same field at the same time.
2. This is done to ensure that farmers have some produce even if the monsoon is unpredictable.
3. If the amount of rainfall is good, rice crops will produce more, and if the monsoon rains fail, fewer water-demanding crops such as maize, millets, and pulses will produce more.

A high percentage of reporting areas under cultivation: 

India has a net planted area of approximately 142 million hectares. This equates to 46 per cent of the land being cultivated. When compared to some of the more advanced countries, this is a fairly high rate.

Labour intensive: 

1. Agriculture employs over half of the Indian population. This further demonstrates India’s reliance on agriculture for both food and employment.
2. Farming mechanisation is primarily seen in northern areas such as Punjab, Haryana, and West Uttar Pradesh. Farming mechanisms are also in use in Uttarakhand, Gujarat, and Maharashtra.

India Agriculture: Determination

The elements that influence cropping patterns, crop yields, and general agricultural development are as follows:

1. Topography, climate, and soil are all physical influences.
2. Size of farm holdings, land tenure, and land reforms are all institutional issues.
3. Irrigation, electricity, roads, and storage are all infrastructure factors.
4. High Yielding Variety (HYV) seeds, fertilisers, insecticides, herbicides, and farm machinery are all technological variables.

Problems Of Indian Agriculture:

Small and fragmented landholdings:

1. In the 1970s, the average landholding size was roughly 2.28 mha; in 2010-11, it was around 1.16 mha. With time, the size of the holdings will undoubtedly shrink.
2. In places like Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar, and the eastern half of Uttar Pradesh, where the average size of land holdings is less than one hectare, the issue of impractical and small land holdings is particularly prominent. The issue is with the law on inheritance.
3. The landholdings of a father are split equally among his sons, who are then divided further among their sons. Farming becomes unprofitable as a result of this.
4. Irrigation becomes a challenge in such small and fragmented areas as well. Furthermore, although practically all states have passed laws allowing for the consolidation of property, only a few states, such as Punjab and Haryana, have executed it.

Seed: 

1. Seed is the most fundamental component of agricultural production. Quality agricultural production necessitates a well-connected seed delivery network. Unfortunately, good variety seeds are out of reach for the majority of farmers, especially small and marginal farmers, due to expensive seed prices.
2. To address this problem, the Indian government has taken several efforts to ensure that farmers have access to high-quality seeds in sufficient numbers and at reasonable costs. However, the benefits of the government’s programmes are still out of reach for small and marginal farmers.

Usage of Fertilizers:

1. Overuse of manures and fertilisers has resulted in soil depletion and exhaustion over time, resulting in low output. Almost every crop has one of the lowest average yields in the world.
2. Unscientific fertiliser use is one of the reasons behind this. Fertilizers, for example, should have an NPK ratio of roughly 4:2:1 according to scientific studies. In India, however, the ratio is roughly 8.2:3.2:1.

Irrigation:

1. Irrigation covers only one-third of the total planted area. In a tropical monsoon country like India, where rainfall is unpredictable, inconsistent, and erratic, irrigation is the most important agricultural input.
2. Punjab, Haryana, and West Uttar Pradesh have succeeded in bringing half of their land under irrigation.

Agricultural Marketing:

The existence of middlemen between farmers and markets is a concern in agricultural marketing in India. The farmers’ agricultural produce is paid very little by the intermediaries, who then sell it at a very high price in the open markets.

Inadequate storage facilities:

1. In remote places, storage facilities are either non-existent or woefully inadequate. Farmers are forced to sell their produce soon after harvest at market prices, which are almost always poor. Farmers lose their rightful income as a result of such distress sales.
2. The Food Corporation of India (F.C.I. ), the Central Warehousing Corporation (C.W.C. ), and the State Warehousing Corporation are the main entities involved in providing storage facilities at the moment. They also aid in the accumulation of buffer stock.

Inadequate transport:

There are still lakhs of villages that are not properly connected to big routes or market centres. The majority of rural roads are Kutcha, which is rendered impassable during the wet season. Farmers are unable to get their produce to the major market and are compelled to sell it at a cheap price in the local market.

Scarcity of capital:

1. Until now, the majority of farmers have relied on money lenders for finance. This is mostly due to a lack of institutional capital and banking infrastructure in India’s far-flung regions.
2. According to the All India Rural Credit Survey Committee, money lenders accounted for 68.6% of total rural credit in the 1950s, but by the 1970s, their share had dropped to 43% of farmers’ credit demands. As a result, moneylenders’ influence in rural India remains substantial, even though it is waning.

Tradition Bound:

Even at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Indian agriculture is tradition-bound, notwithstanding occasional innovations. The mechanisms of a self-contained rural economy, established on caste-drain occupational laud tenure and complicated by absentee and predatory landlords, have been in place for generations. The largest impediment to modernization has been tradition-bound institutions, and Indian agriculture has been hesitant to respond to new inventive ideas.

Primitive Technology:

Modern technology is only used in a few states, such as Punjab and Haryana. However, in the majority of states, reliance on rudimentary technologies is still common. This harms both production and productivity.

Lack of Crop Diversification:

1. Crop diversification entails planting a variety of Indian crops to reduce reliance on a particular crop. Even while mixed cropping is practised in India, it is mostly geared toward food crops, leaving other crops such as pulses behind.
2. This is detrimental to agriculture’s balanced growth. This is demonstrated by the fact that, despite having the world’s greatest cattle population, only about 4% of the land is used for fodder crop cultivation.