Agriculture in India

Agriculture is the backbone of India. About half of the country's people still depend on farming for their living. It feeds the entire nation of more than a billion. Indian agriculture has many faces, from a tribal family growing just enough to eat on a small forest clearing to a modern farm growing cotton for export. Understanding the types of farming, the crop seasons, the major crops and the reforms that have modernised it is central to the geography of India.

The national Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households fills in the human picture. Among the states, Rajasthan has the highest share of households that are agricultural. The Other Backward Classes form the largest social group among agricultural households, at roughly 45 per cent. Kerala stands out for a different reason. Its agricultural households earn most of their income from non-farm sources such as salaries, wages and business, not from cultivation itself.

Geographers group the work people do into broad kinds of economic activity. The most basic are the primary activities, those that take resources directly from nature. They include gathering, pastoralism, agriculture, fishing and mining. Most of the developing world still depends on them. Agriculture is the most important primary activity. Its older cousins survive alongside it.

• Gathering: collecting wild plants, fruits, nuts, honey and other forest produce. It survives among some forest communities and supplies products such as rubber and medicinal plants.
• Pastoralism: the rearing of animals. It takes two forms. Nomadic herding moves herders and animals in search of pasture, as in dry and mountain regions. Commercial livestock rearing is large-scale, organised ranching of animals for the market.
• Mining: the extraction of valuable minerals from the earth. Whether a deposit is worth mining depends on how rich it is, how easy it is to reach, and the demand and price for the mineral. Surface (open-cast) mining is used when the mineral lies near the surface. It is cheaper and safer. Underground (shaft) mining is used for deep deposits. It is more costly and dangerous, requiring shafts and tunnels. Mining supplies the raw materials (coal, iron, copper, petroleum) on which industry depends, but it can scar the land and harm the environment.

Farming in India ranges from the most basic to the highly commercial.

Primitive subsistence farming is practised on small patches of land with simple tools and family labour. It depends on the monsoon and the natural fertility of the soil. Its best-known form is shifting cultivation (called jhum in the north-east). A plot of forest is cleared, cultivated for a few years, then abandoned for a new one.

Intensive subsistence farming is practised where the population is large and farms are small. The farmer uses large amounts of labour, fertiliser and irrigation. The goal is to get the maximum output from a small piece of land.

Commercial farming grows crops mainly for sale in the market. It uses modern inputs such as high-yielding seeds, fertilisers and machines. Plantation farming is a type of commercial farming. A single crop like tea, coffee or rubber is grown on a large estate.

The same types appear worldwide. Shifting cultivation is common in tropical forests. Intensive subsistence farming is typical of monsoon Asia. Commercial farming adds two more forms. Commercial grain farming uses large mechanised farms to grow grain, mainly wheat, for sale. Mixed farming raises crops and animals together on the same farm. The type of agriculture practised in a place depends on the climate, the soil, the level of technology and the market.

Three newer models refine these basic types.

• Small Farmer Large Field (SFLF): marginal farmers with tiny adjoining plots form a group and synchronise their operations. They sow the same crop at the same time, buy inputs together and harvest together, so the small plots work like one large field. No farmer surrenders ownership of land.
• Conservation Agriculture: rests on three pillars. The soil is disturbed as little as possible (minimum or zero tillage). The surface is kept under a permanent cover of crop residue. Crops are rotated or diversified rather than repeated.
• Permaculture: designs the farm to mimic a natural ecosystem. It discourages monoculture, grows many species together, keeps the soil mulched and covered, and uses little chemical input and far less water. Conventional chemical farming is its opposite: dominant monoculture, heavy fertiliser and pesticide doses, and intensive irrigation.

India has three main cropping seasons.

• Rabi crops are sown in winter (around October to December) and harvested in summer (April to June). Wheat, barley, peas, gram and mustard are rabi crops.
• Kharif crops are sown with the onset of the monsoon (June to July) and harvested in September to October. Rice, maize, jowar, bajra, cotton and groundnut are kharif crops.
• Zaid is a short summer season between rabi and kharif, used for quick-growing crops like watermelon, cucumber and fodder.

Acreage within the kharif season is very unevenly spread. Rice occupies the largest kharif area by a wide margin. The area under cotton is larger than the area under sugarcane. The area under jowar is smaller than the combined area under oilseeds. Sugarcane acreage has stayed broadly stable over the years. It has not steadily declined.

India grows a great variety of crops.

Among food crops, rice is the staple food of the majority. It needs high temperature and plenty of water. Wheat is the second most important food grain and the main crop of the north and north-west. It needs a cool growing season. Millets such as jowar, bajra and ragi are hardy, nutritious "coarse grains". Pulses are the main source of protein in a largely vegetarian diet. Being legumes, they also help restore soil fertility.

Among cash crops, sugarcane is grown for sugar and gur. Cotton needs black soil and is the raw material for the textile industry. Jute, the "golden fibre", grows in the wet Ganga–Brahmaputra delta. Tea and coffee are important plantation crops, India being a leading producer of tea.

• Wheat: moderate temperature and moderate rainfall. Too much heat or too much water harms it.
• Cotton: a subtropical kharif crop. It cannot tolerate frost. It needs about 50–100 cm of rainfall and a light, well-drained soil that can still hold moisture, which is why the black soil of the Deccan suits it.
• Tea: a warm, moist, frost-free climate with showers spread through the year. New bushes are raised from cuttings of high-yielding plants.
• Coffee: less tolerant of direct heat. It is grown under shade trees on hill slopes and is raised from seedlings.

• Tea: beyond the famous Assam and West Bengal gardens, tea is also grown in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Tripura.
• Cotton: the cotton belt runs across north-western and western India. Maharashtra is the classic cotton state of the black-soil Deccan.
• Sugarcane: Uttar Pradesh is the largest producing state, followed by Maharashtra, with Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh next. Mandya in Karnataka is a well-known sugarcane district.
• Jute: concentrated in West Bengal in the wet delta. The Barak valley of Assam is another jute tract.
• Groundnut: Gujarat is the leading producer.
• Tapioca: a staple tuber crop of Kerala.
• Coffee: Chikmagalur in Karnataka is the classic coffee district.
• Orchids: Arunachal Pradesh is famous for them.

Three regions invite map confusion. Kinnaur, an apple-growing district, lies in Himachal Pradesh. Mewat lies across southern Haryana and adjoining Rajasthan, not in Madhya Pradesh. The Coromandel coast is the south-eastern coast, covering Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra Pradesh.

• Turmeric: India is the world's largest producer and exporter, with more than 30 varieties grown, mainly in Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
• Rice: India is the world's largest rice exporter. Even so, only a small share of the world's rice crop ever crosses borders, because most rice is eaten in the country that grows it.
• Sugar: India is the world's largest producer of sugar.
• Silk: India is the only country that produces all five known commercial varieties of silk: mulberry, tropical tasar, oak tasar, eri and muga.
• Edible oil: India imports it in large quantities. Oilseeds are mostly rainfed, their yields are low, and acreage has shifted to assured-price cereals, so domestic output falls short of demand.

• Niger: a kharif oilseed covered by the MSP. It is grown widely in tribal areas, where its seed oil is used for cooking.
• Maize: more than a food grain. It supplies starch to industry, serves as a feedstock for biofuel, and is used in making beverages.
• Pulses: about 90 per cent rainfed, and the area under them has stayed nearly stagnant for decades. Black gram is grown in both kharif and rabi. Cowpea, green gram and pigeon pea serve triple duty as pulse, fodder and green manure.
• Nitrogen fixers: legumes such as alfalfa, chickpea and clover fix atmospheric nitrogen through bacteria in their root nodules.
• Rainfed trio: groundnut, sesamum and pearl millet are typical rainfed crops.
• Sugarcane: the least water-efficient of India's major crops. New plantings are increasingly raised from bud chips and tissue-culture plantlets instead of whole-cane setts. These germinate faster and cut the cost of seed material.
• Moringa and tamarind: moringa (drumstick) is a fast-growing, drought-hardy tree with highly nutritious pods and leaves. Tamarind, though grown across South India for centuries, originated in Africa.

By sheer tonnage, sugarcane is India's biggest single crop. Among food grains, rice leads and wheat comes second.

Farming in India is rarely crops alone. Most farm households also keep animals for milk, draught power and manure. India has the largest livestock population in the world. It holds the highest count of cattle and buffaloes of any country. This makes animal husbandry a major source of income, especially for small farmers.

The government runs the Rashtriya Gokul Mission to develop and conserve indigenous cattle and buffalo breeds in a scientific and holistic manner. The mission matters for the rural poor for a clear reason. Most low-producing indigenous animals are kept by small and marginal farmers and landless labourers. Raising the productivity of these breeds therefore lifts the incomes of the poorest rural households.

India's land endowment is large but unevenly used. India has more arable land than China. Yet China irrigates a higher proportion of its farmland and gets a higher average yield per hectare. The share of net sown area, the land actually cultivated in a year, also varies across states. West Bengal has a higher share of its area under the plough than Andhra Pradesh, which has a diverse mix of soils rather than one dominant type.

Soil quality decides how well land holds water and nutrients. A high content of organic matter increases the soil's water-holding capacity. Soil also plays an active part in nutrient cycles, including the sulphur cycle. Irrigation has a hidden cost: water applied over a long period can cause waterlogging and salinization. How salinization damages the soil is explained in the next section.

Several field practices conserve water and nutrients.

• Reduced or zero tillage: disturbing the soil less cuts evaporation and keeps moisture in.
• Crop residue mulching: leaving residue on the field shades the soil and holds water.
• Gypsum: a soil amendment that improves the structure of alkaline soils. It is not mainly a water-conservation measure.
• Fertigation: supplying fertiliser dissolved in irrigation water. It lets the farmer control the alkalinity of irrigation water, raises nutrient availability to plants and reduces leaching of nutrients. Sparingly soluble fertilisers such as rock phosphate cannot be applied this way.

How water is applied matters as much as how much is applied. Drip irrigation delivers water slowly at the plant's roots. It reduces weed growth between rows and reduces soil erosion. It does not reduce soil salinity: salts can in fact accumulate near the drip points. More broadly, micro-irrigation (drip and sprinkler systems) cuts fertiliser and nutrient loss and, by reducing excessive pumping, can check the receding of the groundwater table. It is not the only means of irrigation in dryland farming, which is largely rainfed.

Poorly managed irrigation causes salinization. Water that accumulates in the soil evaporates and leaves salts and minerals behind. The salts clog soil pores and make some soils impermeable, which starves roots of air and water.

Two government programmes are frequently tested.

• Command Area Development Programme (1974-75): launched to improve water-use efficiency in the command areas of irrigation projects.
• Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme (1996-97): central loan assistance to states to complete large stalled irrigation projects. It was not a loan scheme for poor farmers.

Chemical fertilisers raised yields, but their misuse carries costs. Excessive use of nitrogenous fertilisers increases soil acidity and causes nitrate leaching into groundwater. It does not multiply nitrogen-fixing microorganisms: high soil nitrogen actually suppresses them. To improve efficiency, the government mandates neem-coated urea. The neem coating acts as a nitrification inhibitor. It slows the dissolution of urea in the soil, so nitrogen is released gradually and less is lost.

Biofertilisers are living organisms that supply nutrients to crops. Blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) such as Nostoc carry the nitrogenase enzyme. They convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form crop plants can absorb readily. Agaricus, a mushroom, and Spirogyra, a green alga, do not fix nitrogen and are not biofertilisers.

Biopesticides are pest-control products derived from living organisms. All three major kinds of organisms contribute.

• Bacteria: Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin kills insect larvae.
• Fungi: Beauveria bassiana infects and kills insect pests.
• Flowering plants: neem and pyrethrum yield natural pesticides.

After independence, agriculture was modernised through reforms of two kinds.

Institutional reforms changed the rules of land. Land reforms abolished the old zamindari system and tried to give land to the tiller. They also consolidated scattered holdings into larger blocks.

Technological reforms changed the methods of farming. The Green Revolution of the 1960s introduced high-yielding varieties of seeds, chemical fertilisers and irrigation. This sharply raised the output of wheat and rice and made India self-sufficient in food grains. The White Revolution (Operation Flood) did the same for milk. The government also supports farmers by announcing a Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops. It also provides crop insurance and cheap loans (Kisan Credit Card).

Norman Borlaug, the breeder of the dwarf wheats, was an American scientist from the USA. He is often called the father of the Green Revolution. The high-yielding wheat varieties released in India included Sonalika and Arjun.

The MSP system has precise rules that exams probe.

• Who recommends, and for what: the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) recommends MSPs for about 22–23 crops, spanning cereals, pulses, oilseeds and commercial crops. Its stated objectives are assured remunerative prices for farmers and a balanced cropping pattern.
• Procurement is limited and targeted: the government does not buy every crop everywhere. Actual purchase is concentrated on rice and wheat in selected states. The open-market price can rule above the MSP. The MSP is only a floor, not the ruling price.
• FCI economic cost: the full cost of grain to the Food Corporation of India equals the MSP plus procurement incidentals plus the cost of distribution.
• Sugarcane stands apart: its price is the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP), approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), not announced with the MSPs. Earlier, cane carried a Statutory Minimum Price fixed under the Sugarcane (Control) Order, issued under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955.
• Subsidy versus public investment: input subsidies on fertiliser, power and water support current consumption. Public investment in irrigation works, research and rural roads builds long-term capacity and gives higher returns. Economists warn that rising subsidies have crowded out such investment.

The Kisan Credit Card provides short-term credit for the working capital of cultivation, the household's consumption needs, post-harvest expenses and the upkeep of farm assets. It is not meant for buying tractors or constructing houses. Those need long-term loans. Crop insurance began on a national scale with the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) in 1999. Its successor, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), caps the farmer's premium at 2 per cent for kharif crops, 1.5 per cent for rabi crops and 5 per cent for commercial and horticultural crops, and covers losses from prevented sowing to post-harvest damage.

• Regulated mandis: rest on the APMC Acts passed by state legislatures. These Acts are the legal basis of the mandi system.
• eNAM: the National Agriculture Market, an electronic portal that links mandis across the country into a single online market.
• Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme: funded 100 per cent by the Union government. It digitises cadastral maps, computerises the records of rights and provides for transliterating those records into local languages.
• Soil Health Card: gives each farm a soil-test report with crop-wise recommendations of nutrients and fertilisers, so the farmer applies only what the soil actually needs.
• INSIMP: the Initiative for Nutritional Security through Intensive Millets Promotion, a scheme to promote millet production and consumption.
• Seed Village Concept: trains farmers in a village to produce quality seed for themselves and their neighbours. It attacks the low Seed Replacement Rate, which stays low because farmers reuse saved grain as seed and certified seed is costly and scarce.
• Mega Food Parks: cluster-based infrastructure that links farm production to food processors and markets.
• NFSM: the National Food Security Mission, run by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, raises the production of rice, wheat, pulses and coarse cereals.

Modern farming is being redesigned to use fewer inputs and emit fewer greenhouse gases. Several crop-specific methods lead this shift. The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) grows rice with wider spacing and alternate wetting and drying of fields instead of continuous flooding. It reduces the seed requirement, reduces methane production (because the soil is not kept anaerobic) and reduces electricity used for pumping. The Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI) raises sugarcane from bud-chip seedlings. Seed cost is very low, drip irrigation works effectively with it, and the wide spacing leaves more scope for intercropping. It does not ban chemical fertilisers altogether.

Zero tillage, met earlier as a moisture saver, sows the next crop without ploughing. Wheat can be sown without burning the residue of the previous crop, paddy seeds can be planted directly in wet soil without a nursery, and the undisturbed soil sequesters carbon. Other practices counted as eco-friendly agriculture include organic farming, crop diversification, legume intensification (legumes fix nitrogen naturally) and the use of tensiometers, instruments that measure soil moisture so irrigation is given only when needed. Vertical farming is resource-intensive and is not counted among them. Biochar, a porous charcoal added to soil, serves as a growing medium in vertical farming, promotes nitrogen-fixing microorganisms and helps the medium retain water longer.

Two international frameworks recur in exams.

• Climate-Smart Village: an approach piloted in India under CCAFS (Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security), a research programme of the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), which is headquartered in France. ICRISAT in Hyderabad is one of the CGIAR research centres.
• GACSA: the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, launched at the 2014 UN Climate Summit in New York, not at Paris 2015. Membership is voluntary and creates no binding obligations. India was not among its founders.

For organic produce, the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) sets the certification standards. It operates under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, with APEDA (the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority) as its secretariat. Sikkim became India's first fully organic state in 2016.

Agriculture is primarily a state subject. The Seventh Schedule of the Constitution places agriculture, including agricultural education and research, in the State List. The power to tax agricultural income follows the same logic. Entry 46 of the State List assigns agricultural income-tax exclusively to the state governments. This assignment is made by the Constitution itself, not by the Finance Commission or any council. That is why the central income-tax law exempts agricultural income.

Two out of every three Indians live in villages. The country cannot prosper unless its villages do. Rural development therefore means the all-round improvement of rural life, not just higher farm output. It covers several connected things.

• Productivity: improving the productivity of both people and land.
• Land reforms, credit and marketing: changing land rules and connecting farmers to finance and fair markets.
• Infrastructure: roads, power, irrigation, schools and health facilities.
• Poverty reduction: raising health and literacy along with incomes.

Credit is the first need. Farmers must buy seeds, fertiliser and equipment, and bridge the long gap between sowing and selling. Historically, farmers were trapped by moneylenders charging crushing interest. To free them, India built a network of formal rural credit.

• Cooperative credit societies and commercial banks: the ground-level lenders to farmers.
• Regional Rural Banks: banks created to serve rural areas.
• NABARD: the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, set up in 1982 as the apex body coordinating rural finance.

Self-help groups have further extended cheap credit to the poor, especially women.

Growing crops is only half the battle. The farmer must also sell them at a fair price. Agricultural marketing is the process of gathering, storing, grading and selling farm produce. Farmers were often cheated by traders and forced to sell cheap. The government improved marketing through several measures.

• Regulated markets (mandis): market yards governed by rules to ensure fair dealing between farmers and traders.
• Minimum Support Price: the guaranteed floor price, so traders cannot force a sale below it.
• Buffer stocks and the Public Distribution System: state purchase and cheap distribution of grain, which also anchor food security.
• Cooperative marketing: farmers selling together for a better price, as Amul did for milk.

Depending on crops alone is risky. Farming is seasonal and vulnerable to a bad monsoon. Diversification, spreading into other activities, makes rural incomes higher and more stable. The important avenues are these.

• Animal husbandry: dairying, expanded by the White Revolution.
• Fisheries: inland and marine fishing.
• Horticulture: fruits, vegetables and flowers.
• Non-farm employment: work in small industry and services.

Such diversification creates jobs, especially for women and the landless, and reduces dependence on the uncertain monsoon.

Food security means that food is available to all people at all times, and that everyone can afford it. India works to ensure this in two main ways. First, it buys grain from farmers and keeps a buffer stock through the Food Corporation of India. Second, it distributes cheap food grain to the poor through the Public Distribution System (PDS) of ration shops. These measures protect the country against famine and shield the poor from sudden rises in food prices.

Grain policy uses a family of administered prices that must not be confused.

• Minimum Support Price: the floor price announced before sowing, at which the government stands ready to buy.
• Procurement price: the price at which the government actually buys grain after the harvest for the buffer stock and the PDS. Historically it was announced post-harvest and set above the MSP but below the open-market price. In practice the two have since merged.
• Issue price: the subsidised price at which the FCI releases grain to the ration shops.
• Ceiling price: the legal maximum at which a commodity may be sold, imposed during shortages.

Since 1997 the PDS has run as the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS). Distribution is targeted at poor households rather than universal and open-ended. The Centre allocates grain to every state at uniform Central Issue Prices, and each state manages distribution within its territory.