Determinants of Agriculture – UPSC

• The determinants of agriculture are the conditions that decide what a region grows, how it farms and how much it harvests. They explain farm practices, cropping patterns and productivity alike.
• Their roots are geo-climatic, socio-economic and cultural-political, and they fall into four working groups:
  • Physical factors: terrain, topography, climate and soil.
  • Institutional factors: land tenure, tenancy, size of holdings and fields, and land reforms.
  • Infrastructural factors: irrigation, electricity, roads, credit and marketing, storage, crop insurance and research.
  • Technological factors: high-yielding varieties of seed brought in by the Green Revolution, chemical fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides and farm machinery.
• These factors work singly and in combination, so the level of farm development and crop yield in any region is the product of all four.

• This chart adds a fifth group, socio-economic factors (population, poverty, literacy), and lists credit as institutional. Credit is both: it is a service like roads and storage, and it depends on institutions such as banks and cooperatives.
• Human effort eases physical limits but never removes them. Irrigation has carried cultivation into dry lands, manures restore tired soil and pesticides protect crops, yet the physical base still sets the wider frame.

Physical Factors

• Terrain, topography, climate and soil each influence productivity to a different degree.
• They do not act alone. The farming of a place reflects a combination of physical conditions, not any one of them.

Terrain, Topography and Altitude

• Farming patterns depend closely on geo-ecological conditions: the lie of the land, its slope and its height.
• Temperature falls steadily with height, so altitude alters productivity, crop choice and farm operations.

• Crops seek particular ground:
  • Paddy needs levelled fields that hold standing water.
  • Tea does well on undulating land, because standing water harms its roots.
  • Coconut orchards keep to low altitudes, preferably close to sea level.
  • Apple orchards in tropical and sub-tropical latitudes do well above 1,500 m.
• Height limit: in tropical and sub-tropical latitudes, crops are rarely grown above 3,500 m.
  • Thin air, cold, low pressure and scarce oxygen there hamper both cropping and the keeping of dairy cattle.
• High-mountain soils are immature. Slopes strip the soil as it forms, leaving it thin and poor for farming.
• Topography bears on farming through soil erosion, the difficulty of tillage and poor transport.
• Machinery follows the land: mechanisation is ruled out on rough, hilly ground. Farm power and machinery spread first on the plains.
• Rainfall follows relief: the windward side of a range receives more than the leeward side.
  • The windward Western Ghats get about 250–300 cm, the leeward side about 75–100 cm.
• Rainfall then decides the crop: West Bengal can grow jute, and Rajasthan cannot.
• Aspect of slope means whether a slope faces the sun, and it is read together with steepness.
  • The steeper the slope, the less suited it is to farming. Terrace farming is the response on steep slopes.
• Surface condition matters too. Gullied land is the least suited to cropping, being badly eroded and short of nutrients.
  • The Chambal ravines of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh have removed thousands of hectares of good farmland from use.
• The western Himalaya shows the altitude effect as a ladder of agro-climatic belts:

Climate

• Climate is among the most powerful controls on agricultural land use and cropping patterns, and temperature governs every form of farming.
• Regions short of heat are short of agriculture, because heat is the one element people cannot yet supply cheaply on a large scale.
• Temperature fixes the length of the vegetative period, so successful farming calls for a fairly long summer.
• Low latitudes: winters are never cold enough to stop growth. Nearly the whole year is a growing season, and farm work is timed by rainfall.
• High latitudes: the short summer is offset by long days, and total heat is still enough to ripen crops.
• The elements that matter most are temperature, frost, moisture, rainfall and drought, snow, winds and sunlight.

Temperature

• Crops, their patterns and their combinations answer closely to temperature and precipitation.
• Each crop has a specific zero, below which it will not grow, and an optimum, at which it is most vigorous.
  • Wheat can be grown in Punjab in November–December because the season is cool. Keralam (Kerala) cannot grow it at that time.
  • Apples grow in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, not in Chennai.
• Each stage of the crop (germination, foliation, blossoming, fruiting) has its own zero and optimum.
• Plant metabolism starts at a minimum temperature and quickens up to the optimum. It then slows, and stops at the maximum. These three values are the cardinal temperature points.

• Upper limit: about 60 °C is often given as the ceiling for plant life. Field crops stop well short of it, at the 30–40 °C shown above, and they dry up sooner if moisture runs short.
• Lower limit: chilling and freezing harm germination, growth and ripening.
  • Frost kills or damages rice, sugarcane, jute, cotton, chilli and tomato.
  • Working minimums are often quoted as 5 °C for wheat and barley, 10 °C for maize and 20 °C for rice. The rice figure is the warmth it needs for good growth; its cardinal minimum is lower.
• Heat units: every crop needs a set total of effective heat to germinate, stalk, mature and ripen. This is its thermal constant, and it differs from crop to crop.
  • Plants usually start growing above about 6 °C, and the most favourable range for crop production lies near 18–24 °C.
• Temperature limits on the map:
  • Date palm: the northern limit of ripe fruit nearly matches the mean annual isotherm of 19 °C.
  • Grapes: they ripen only where the April–October mean exceeds 15 °C.
• Crop groups:
  • Winter wheat and barley do well at a mean daily temperature of 15–25 °C.
  • Tropical crops such as cocoa, coffee, spices, squash, rubber and tobacco need over 18 °C even in the coldest months.
  • Wheat, gram, peas, lentil, potato, mustard and rapeseed need about 20 °C while growing. They want it cooler at sowing, and warmer (over 25 °C) at ripening and harvest.
• Indian pattern: cool north-western winters favour wheat.
  • Ladakh grows wheat as a summer crop, because its winter is too cold for any crop, while Punjab and Haryana grow it in winter.
  • Sugarcane grows in both north and south, but the south is warmer, and cultivation has been drifting there.
• Each crop thus needs different conditions of heat and moisture at germination, maturity and harvest.

Frost

• A frost-free season covers all the days on which temperature stays above freezing. It is effectively the growing season, and it differs by crop.
• South India is free of the danger. In North India winter frost is common, and a sudden spell is especially damaging to crops such as cotton.

Moisture

• Every crop needs moisture, which it takes from the soil. That soil moisture comes from rain or from irrigation.
• Within wide temperature limits, moisture matters more to crop production than any other element of climate.
• There is an optimum for moisture just as there is for temperature.
  • Too much water in the soil upsets its chemical and biological processes, cuts oxygen and builds up compounds toxic to roots. The plant is stunted.
  • Drainage solves the oxygen problem on ill-drained land.
  • Too little can be made up by irrigation.
  • Water sinking far into the subsoil also carries plant nutrients out of reach.
• Heavy rain can damage plants directly, or disturb flowering and pollination.
  • Lodging: rain often flattens cereals, which makes harvest harder and invites spoilage and disease.
  • Rain at maturity of wheat, gram, millets, oilseeds and mustard costs both grain and fodder.
• Indian farmers everywhere have often suffered from failed rains or violent floods.

Rainfall

• Rainfall has the strongest single hold on where and how intensively farming takes place, and on the farmer’s choice of crop. It turns into a hazard when it is scanty, concentrated, intense, variable or unreliable.
• Amount: the 100 cm isohyet broadly divides India’s rice lands (above it) from its wheat lands (below it). Below about 50 cm, low-water crops such as jowar, bajra and maize take over.
• Timing: most crops want rain while growing and a dry spell at ripening.
  • September rain matters for rice in northern India.
  • Winter rain helps wheat in the north-west.
  • Ragi in the south suffers without rain in October and November.
• Rainfall effectiveness: only part of the rain reaches the plant. It rises with total rain and air moisture, and falls with higher temperature and wind speed.

Drought

• Drought has devastating effects on crops, yields and output.
• Soil drought is the state in which the water needed for transpiration and direct evaporation exceeds the water held in the soil.
• Drought damages crops once plants cannot draw enough moisture from the soil.
• Drought-prone areas lie in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, south-west Punjab and Haryana.
• Where annual rainfall is below 75 cm, farming is called a gamble on the monsoon.
  • In 2009 an erratic monsoon brought drought to more than 200 districts.
  • The Vidarbha region of Maharashtra has a high incidence of farmer suicides, tied to crop failure in drought and to thin irrigation cover.
• Measuring it: incidence and intensity are read from how rain is spread over the year, the season and the day. Plants also differ in how much moisture they need.
• Response: drought-prone areas practise dryland farming, and wetter regions carry intensive paddy.

Snow

• Snow lowers ground temperature, which hinders germination and growth.
• Snow-covered fields cannot be made ready for sowing, because the ground stays frozen.
• Melting snow can bring dangerous summer floods that harm crops, livestock and property.
• In the higher Himalaya, thick snow destroys pasture, blocks routes and suspends farm work till summer. Flocks move downhill in winter and uphill in summer, a practice called transhumance, in Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.
• Snow also helps:
  • Cool conditions suit apple orchards at lower altitudes.
  • Snowmelt feeds irrigation and mineral-rich springs.
  • Snow cover over potato fields in Himachal Pradesh is welcomed as the sign of a good crop.

Winds

• Winds act on crops both directly and indirectly.
• Direct effects are mechanical:
  • Plant structure breaks.
  • Cereals, fodder and cash crops lodge, and seed-heads shatter.
  • High winds strip fruit and nuts from trees. Mangoes fall in the May–June storms, and cyclones ruin coastal orchards.
  • Windblown dust or sand can bury small plants.
• Indirect effects work through the transport of moisture and heat. Moving air raises evaporation and transpiration, and can leave plants short of water.
• Wind erosion in Rajasthan and the adjoining parts of Haryana and Gujarat can strip soil down to rock and end cultivation.

Sunlight

• Plants use sunlight for photosynthesis and for making chlorophyll. Better light gives sturdier, more compact plants.

Soils

• Soil is perhaps the most decisive physical factor in farm operations. It governs cropping patterns, crop associations and output.
• Fertility, texture, structure and humus bear directly on crops and productivity.
  • Physical traits include texture, structure, porosity, colour and temperature.
  • Chemical traits are the compounds present. Together with biological traits, they make up fertility.

• Saline and alkaline tracts give no useful crop until reclaimed, as in parts of Punjab and Haryana.
  • They often result from faulty irrigation.
  • Reclamation uses amendments and manures with chemical and biological fertilizers, which is slow and costly.

Institutional Factors

Land Tenure and Tenancy

• Land tenure is the system that settles who holds rights in land.
• Early and shifting-cultivator societies held land collectively. Rights later passed to rulers, the state, or zamindars and talukdars.
• British rule set up the zamindari, ryotwari and mahalwari systems to secure revenue.
• After Independence, zamindari was abolished and laws sought to give land to the tiller, with partial success. The full story belongs to land reforms.

Land Holdings

• The average operational holding keeps shrinking as landholders multiply: 2.28 hectares in 1970-71, 1.15 hectares in 2010-11 and 1.08 hectares in 2015-16, the latest published census result.

• More than 82% of farmers were small and marginal in 2011, holding under 2 hectares. The share reached 86.08% of holdings in 2015-16, on only 46.94% of the operated area.
• Such tiny holdings are neither viable nor sustainable for a country with over a billion people to feed, and the continuing decline makes the problem worse.
• Causes:
  • Fragmentation of holdings into scattered plots.
  • Few off-farm jobs, which keeps families on the land.
  • Inheritance laws that divide property equally among heirs.
• Effects:
  • Small and marginal farmers have a poor economic base, which holds back the farm sector as a whole.
  • High fragmentation has hindered the spread of modern technology.
  • Small owners can seldom afford irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, better seeds and machinery, and yields stay low.

• This pie shows 2010-11. The 2015-16 shares of operated area are marginal 24.03%, small 22.91%, semi-medium 23.84%, medium 20.16% and large 9.07%.

• Economic holding: the Congress Agrarian Reforms Committee (1949) defined it as a holding that gives a reasonable living and full employment to a family of normal size.
• Its size is not fixed:
  • Soil fertility: better soil needs less land, so size falls as fertility rises.
  • Irrigation: assured water lets a smaller plot support a family.
  • Type of farming: intensive farming needs less land than extensive farming.
  • Mechanisation: machines pay only on larger holdings.
  • Crop: about 2 hectares of vegetables can keep a family busy all year, whereas wheat may need about 8.
• State pattern (2010-11): holdings ranged from 0.22 hectare in Keralam to 5.99 hectares in Nagaland.
  • Large holdings in Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh mean little, given rough terrain, forest and shifting cultivation. Rajasthan’s large holdings reflect its desert conditions.
  • In Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, inheritance has undone much of the gain from consolidation.

Agricultural Credit

• Credit is the backbone of every sector of the economy. Farmers need it to meet both investment and working capital.
• Demand rose sharply after the mid-1960s, when costly inputs became central to farming.
• Credit for farmers must be easy, adequate and timely. Yet a large part of the rural population remains outside formal banking, despite a wide network of rural financial institutions (RFIs).
• Reasons for thin credit flow:
  • The long gestation of farm investment.
  • Too few trained staff to identify viable activity.
  • Weak eligibility and poor security.

• Non-institutional lenders: the village moneylender is easy to reach but charges high interest, and failure to repay can cost the farmer his mortgaged land.
• Institutional growth came in three phases:

• Cooperative structure:
  • Short-term credit runs through three tiers: State Cooperative Banks, District Central Cooperative Banks and Primary Agricultural Credit Societies.
  • Long-term credit runs through the cooperative agricultural and rural development banks.
• Supporting bodies and schemes:
  • NABARD, set up in 1982, refinances the system, and handles development and supervision.
  • The Rural Infrastructure Development Fund dates from 1995-96.
  • Kisan Credit Cards came in 1998-99. On 3 August 2026, 7.28 crore accounts were operational, with Rs 10.08 lakh crore outstanding.
  • Self-help group–bank linkage began in 1992.
• Scale: institutional credit to farming reached about Rs 25.49 lakh crore in 2023-24, against Rs 6.07 lakh crore in 2012-13.

Infrastructural and Technological Factors in Brief

• Irrigation: assured water, the main route to higher and steadier output. In 2023-24, 59.3% of net sown area was irrigated.
• Power: runs pumps and machines. Farming took 19.29% of India’s electricity in 2022-23.
• Roads: villages need all-weather links to sell produce and buy inputs, above all perishables. Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana was launched in December 2000.
• Insurance: it compensates for yield losses from natural risks. Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana dates from 2016 and has paid about Rs 1.96 lakh crore in claims up to December 2025.
• Marketing: regulated markets rose from 286 in 1950 to 7,157 in 2010, under State laws, to protect sellers from malpractice.
• Storage: the Food Corporation of India, the Central and State Warehousing Corporations and rural godowns reduce distress sale and grain loss.
• Seeds, fertilizers and machinery: the technological package. Other inputs are only as useful as the seed they serve.