Salient features of Indian Agriculture – UPSC IAS

• Agriculture comes from two words, ager (soil or field) and culture (cultivation). It is the art, science and business of producing crops and livestock for economic purposes.
• Allied activities sit beside it: livestock, fisheries, poultry, horticulture, animal husbandry, dairy and agroforestry.
• Agriculture and its allied sector give India’s huge population both nutrition and livelihood, and link the economy to its monsoon, soils and land resources.

Indian Agriculture

Importance

• Livelihood:
  • Older accounts held that two-thirds of the population depends on farming, directly or indirectly, and that 55% of the labour force works in it.
  • The current official statement (March 2026) is that the sector employs about 46.1% of the workforce and supports close to 55% of the population.
  • Around 1971, some 80% of people lived in rural areas and depended largely on farming.
• Share in output:
  • The sector gave about 45% of GDP around 1971, and later 14–17% in older accounts.
  • It now gives nearly one-fifth of gross value added at current prices (March 2026).
• Exports:
  • An older figure put farm goods at 15% of export earnings.
  • Agricultural exports reached USD 51.1 billion in 2024-25, up from USD 34.5 billion in 2019-20.
  • Main items include tea, coffee, cashew kernels, raw cotton, oilcakes, tobacco, spices, fruit and vegetables.
• Double link with industry:
  • As supplier, farming feeds textiles, sugar, flour mills, jute and apparel.
  • As buyer, it needs tractors, harvesters, threshers, fertilisers and pesticides, and farm income creates a market for manufactured goods.
• Food security: rising output underpins the food supply of a large population. Foodgrain output reached a record 357.73 million tonnes in 2024-25, and horticulture 362.08 million tonnes.
• Natural base: broad level plains, rich soils, a high share of culturable land, climatic variety, ample sunshine and a long growing season.

Salient Features of Indian Agriculture

• Subsistence agriculture: most Indian farming is of this type. Output goes mainly to self-consumption, with little or no surplus for the market.
• Commercial agriculture: large-scale farming for the market also exists, such as tea in Assam, coffee in Karnataka and coconut in Keralam (Kerala). Firms sell large output to earn profits.
• Pressure of population on land: the land resource is limited, and the pressure of a growing population rises day by day.
  • Urban India reached 31.16% of the population in 2011, and towns take farmland as they spread.
• Mechanisation: machines have spread in farm operations since the Green Revolution.
  • Major mechanised areas: Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, and the river valleys of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
  • It is now spreading in Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Maharashtra, though machines remain mostly with richer farmers. Farm power tracks this shift.
• Importance of animals: bullocks and other draught animals still plough, irrigate, thresh and carry over much of the country.
• Monsoon dependence: weak irrigation long left two-thirds of farming dependent on monsoon rain.
  • Net irrigated area was about 55% of net sown area in 2021-22 (77.92 of 141.01 million hectares), and the gross irrigated share has reached 55.8% (March 2026). The rest still rises and falls with an erratic monsoon.
• Variety of crops: topography, soils (alluvial, red, black cotton and others) and climate differ so widely that tropical and temperate crops both thrive.
  • Hill slopes suit tea, and plains suit rice.
• Predominance of food crops: a large population and subsistence habits keep food crops first, in keeping with food security needs.
  • Their share of cropped area was about 64% in 2010-11.
• Neglect of fodder: permanent pastures cover only 3.33% of the reporting area (2023-24), so a very large livestock population is poorly fed and gives low yields.
• Seasonal pattern: there are basically three seasons, kharif, rabi and zaid.
• Mixed cropping: common in rainfed areas as insurance against the monsoon, with several crops in one field and as many as 10–15 under jhum. It protects the farmer but lowers per-hectare output, and the wider cropping systems build on it.
• Large cultivated share: net sown area is 45.28% of the reporting area (2023-24), helped by extensive flat land. An older comparison gave the USA 16.3%, Japan 14.9%, China 11.8% and Canada 4.3%.
• Labour intensity: most field work, from ploughing to threshing, still depends on farmers and their animals.

Cropping Seasons in India

• There are three distinct seasons in the northern and interior parts of the country:
  • Kharif: these crops need plenty of water, so sowing largely coincides with the onset of the southwest monsoon.
  • Rabi: sowing begins with the onset of winter in October–November, and harvest comes in March–April. The festival of Holi is linked with a good harvest in these months.
  • Zaid: a short summer season after the rabi harvest, with watermelons, cucumbers, vegetables and fodder crops on irrigated land. Newer varieties have also brought pulses into this season.
• The south lacks such a clear split, because temperatures stay high. The same crop can be grown up to three times a year where moisture allows.

• Some crops are grown in both kharif and rabi, such as maize, jowar and groundnut.

Shifting Cultivation, Land Rotation or Jhumming

• It is called shifting cultivation because the farmer moves on once the soil loses fertility, generally in 2 to 3 years.
• Forest land is cleared and cultivated, usually by slash and burn. It is also called land rotation, because the same crop, generally rice, moves to a different plot.
• Soil productivity falls with repeated cropping on one cleared patch, and the crop then shifts to fresh slashed and burnt land.
• It causes soil erosion, because clearing strips the vegetation that holds the soil.
• It is practised in the north-eastern States, the Chotanagpur plateau of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and hilly parts of the Himalaya, Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats.
• The figure shows the cycle: forest, cut and burn, crop, fallow, then secondary forest or a fresh cut.

• Regional names:
  • Jhum in Assam and the North-East
  • Ponam in Keralam
  • Podu in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha
  • Bewar, Masha, Penda and Bera in parts of Madhya Pradesh

• The chart’s shares are undated estimates. NITI Aayog (2018) asked that jhum be treated as a distinct land use with a long fallow phase, and called for better data, since the area is poorly documented.

Crop Rotation

• Crop rotation is the reverse of land rotation: the land stays fixed, and the crops change.
• It means planting different crops in sequence on one plot to improve soil health, optimise nutrients, and combat pests and weeds.
• Crops and fallows follow a set scientific sequence that conserves fertility.
• Example: malt barley in the first year, spring wheat in the second, potato in the third, then back to malt barley in the fourth.
• Crops differ in their nutrient needs, so the sequence maintains and even improves fertility, and steadies farm income.
• With some crop nearly always on the ground, rotation checks topsoil erosion and conserves moisture.
• Suitable rotation is central to modern scientific farming, which seeks maximum yield while holding soil productivity. Leaving out nitrogen-fixing legumes works against this aim.

Sustainable Agriculture or Eco-Farming

• Why the concept arose:
  • Yields from modern techniques have reached a plateau.
  • Heavy use of chemicals and fertilisers leaves pesticide residue in the food chain, and brings eutrophication and land degradation that deplete land as a lasting resource.
• Aim: a farming system that meets present food needs without eroding the ecological assets and life-support systems of future generations.
  • The word sustainability describes a process that can be kept up indefinitely.
• The table sets out the contrast. Sustainable agriculture aims for low input and high output, while conserving soil and raising land productivity.

• Practices: manures, crop rotation and minimal tillage, shown below as three principles.

• It also includes agroforestry (trees near crops), multi-level cultivation (trees of different heights in sequence) and integrated animal husbandry (crops raised together with animals).
• Policy: the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture carries this aim into government programmes.

Zero Tillage or No-Till Farming

• Tillage: preparing land by mechanical agitation, which includes digging, stirring and overturning.
• Zero tillage (also no-tillage or nil tillage): seed is sown by drill without prior land preparation, directly into soil holding the stubble of the previous crop.
• It lowers cultivation cost, soil erosion, crop duration, irrigation need and weed effect compared with tillage.
  • It cuts the erosion that tillage causes, especially on sandy, dry soils on sloping terrain.
• USA: no-till is widely used there, and the area keeps growing as costs fall. Fewer machine passes are needed, and crop residue slows evaporation and improves water infiltration.
• India: it has spread for wheat after rice on the rice-wheat belt of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, which covers about 12–13.5 million hectares. The Happy Seeder sows into residue and gives farmers an option other than burning straw.

• Advantages:
  • Shorter crop duration, so earlier cropping and higher yields.
  • Lower land-preparation cost, by around 80%. Field trials report a 75–80% cut in fuel use.
  • Better use of residual moisture, with fewer irrigations.
  • Dry matter and organic matter added to the soil.
  • Carbon sequestration that lowers the greenhouse effect. Claimed cuts in nitrous oxide emissions are 40–70%, though results vary with soil and moisture.
  • Less compaction, less water lost as runoff, and less erosion.
  • More useful flora and fauna, since the soil is left undisturbed.
• Disadvantages:
  • High initial cost of equipment, which should be recouped through higher yields and savings on fuel and labour.
  • Gullies can form in fields, which low-pressure tyres and changing traffic patterns help prevent.
  • Greater use of herbicides.
  • A learning curve for farmers.

Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF)

• ZBNF drops chemical pesticides, sustains farming with eco-friendly processes, and restores soil fertility and organic matter.
• It is a chemical-free method based on agroecology. “Zero budget” means no net spending on bought inputs, because natural fertilisers, biological pesticides and local seeds replace them.
• The method is linked with Subhash Palekar, a Padma Shri awardee.
• Benefits claimed:
  • As a social and environmental programme, it seeks to keep smallholder farming viable by enhancing farm biodiversity and ecosystem services.
  • It cuts costs by using in-situ resources to rejuvenate soils, and aims at higher incomes and healthier ecosystems through diverse, multi-layered cropping.
  • Its advocates treat dung from local cows as a cure for tired soil, believing one gram holds 300–500 crore beneficial micro-organisms, which break down dried biomass into ready plant nutrients.
  • They also claim it needs only 10% of the water and electricity used by chemical and organic farming, and that it helps crops adapt to changing climatic conditions.
• Four wheels of ZBNF:
  • Jiwamrita: fermented desi cow dung and urine, jaggery, pulse flour, water and bund soil. It is a source of some 500 crore micro-organisms that turn unavailable nutrients into available ones, and is not itself a fertiliser.
  • Bijamrita: desi cow dung and urine, water, bund soil and lime, used to treat seed before sowing.
  • Mulching: a layer of dried straw or fallen leaves that conserves moisture and holds root temperature at 25–32°C, so micro-organisms can work.
  • Waaphasa: water supplied to keep the moisture-air balance, serving the same end.

• Evaluation and policy:
  • The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (2019) called ZBNF unproven and advised against public spending on it without evidence.
  • The Union Cabinet approved the National Mission on Natural Farming on 25 November 2024, with Rs 2,481 crore to reach 1 crore farmers and 7.5 lakh hectares through 15,000 clusters.

Subsistence Farming

• Farmers grow food for themselves and their families on smallholdings, for survival and mostly local needs, with little or no surplus.
• The majority of farmers in the country practise it.
• Features:
  • Small and scattered holdings and primitive tools.
  • Poor farmers use fertilisers and high-yielding seed less than they should.
  • Electricity and irrigation are generally lacking.
  • The whole family works the farm, mostly by hand.
  • Yields are modest, and the family eats most of the output.

Plantation Agriculture

• Plantation agriculture is commercial farming of a single crop grown through the entire year.
• Major crops: tea, coffee, sugarcane, cashew, rubber, banana and cotton.
• Location: mainly the tropics, on every continent with a tropical climate.
  • Examples: rubber in Malaysia, coffee in Brazil, tea in India and Sri Lanka.
• Nature: capital-intensive and export-oriented, needing good management, technical know-how, sophisticated machinery, fertilisers, irrigation and transport.

Dryland and Wetland Farming

• Dryland farming:
  • Practised under low rainfall, as in Rajasthan and parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra. Soils are sandy, with low water retention.
  • Crops: peas, millets, gram and other drought-resistant crops or varieties.
  • It helps in soil and water conservation, and dryland and rainfed farming form a field of their own.
• Wetland farming:
  • Practised under high annual rainfall, mainly in river plains, north-east India and the Ghats. Crops needing much water grow easily.
  • Crops: rice, sugarcane and jute. Cotton is often listed too, though it is chiefly a crop of black soils and irrigated tracts.

• This table compares dryland with rainfed farming, the next step up the rainfall scale. Wetland farming lies beyond both.

Terrace Cultivation

• Hill and mountain slopes are cut into terraces, and the land is then used as in permanent farming.
• Flat land is scarce on such slopes, so terraces supply small level patches.
• Terracing also checks soil erosion. Rice is the main crop on many hill terraces.

Problems of Indian Agriculture

• The problems are partly natural and partly made by people, and they reinforce one another.

Land and Tenure

• Small and fragmented holdings:
  • Net sown and cropped areas look large until they are divided among farmers. The average holding fell from 2.28 hectares (1970-71) to 1.16 (2010-11) and 1.08 (2015-16).
  • Keralam, West Bengal, Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh are worst placed, with averages under one hectare and pockets under half a hectare.
  • Inheritance drives it. Each heir takes a share of every tract, so plots shrink and scatter with each generation.
  • Time and labour go in moving between plots, irrigation becomes harder, and boundaries waste good land.
  • The remedy is consolidation, which has gone far only in Punjab, Haryana and parts of Uttar Pradesh.
• Land tenancy: where absentee owners hold the land, tillers have little reason to invest, and yields stay low.
• No definite land use policy: with no national or regional plan, farmers choose crops freely, so gluts and shortages follow by turns. Land capability offers one planning guide.

Soil and Water

• Low fertility: long cropping without replenishment has left many soils short of nutrients and humus.
• Soil erosion and degradation: poor practice and reckless tree-felling expose the topsoil to water in wet areas and wind in dry ones. The causes and conservation of this loss form a study of their own. Some 25.55 crore Soil Health Cards had been issued by November 2025.
• Irrigation:
  • Assured water is the key input in a tropical monsoon country, as Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh show.
  • Excess brings its own harm. Salinity, alkalinity and waterlogging have hit tracts of Punjab and Haryana and the Indira Gandhi Canal command.
• Monsoon dependence: rainfall varies most where it is least, and a failure can push prices up and bring famine conditions in extreme cases.

Inputs and Technology

• Seeds: good seed is costly, and public schemes often miss small and marginal farmers.
• Manures, fertilisers and biocides:
  • Dung is the best manure, yet much of it is burnt as kitchen fuel, and chemical fertiliser is often beyond poor farmers despite subsidy.
  • Rural and urban compost remain under-used, though using them would also solve a waste disposal problem.
  • Pests, germs and weeds once took about one-third of field output. Biocides saved crops, but careless use spreads pollution.
• Weak mechanisation and primitive technology: the wooden plough, sickle and hoe, with bullocks, male buffaloes or camels, waste labour on small farms. Machinery reaches mainly richer farmers in a few States, although a large industry now builds tractors, power tillers and harvesters.

Markets and Money

• Marketing:
  • Poor farmers cannot wait after harvest, so they make distress sales in the village, often to the moneylender who lent to them.
  • Surveys once showed middlemen taking 48% of the consumer’s price for rice, 52% for groundnut and 60% for potato.
  • Regulated markets answer this with competitive buying, standard weights and a means of settling disputes.
• Storage:
  • Lack of storage forces immediate sale at low prices. An older estimate set post-harvest loss at 9.3%, of which 6.6% came from poor storage.
  • The Food Corporation of India, the Central and State Warehousing Corporations, and the rural godown scheme of 1979-80 work on this.
• Transport: many villages still lack good links, and kutcha roads fail in the rains, which ties farmers to the local market.
• Scarcity of capital:
  • A farmer’s capital is locked in land and stock, so he must borrow. Moneylenders supplied 68.6% of rural credit in 1950-51 and 43% in 1975-76, at high interest.
  • Cooperative and commercial banks have since widened lending, and PM-KISAN had paid out Rs 4.27 lakh crore in 22 instalments by March 2026.

Society and Support

• Tradition: caste-linked occupations and absentee landlords slow the response to new ideas.
• Low status of farming: young people from farm families prefer petty office jobs, rich farmers invest elsewhere, and many migrants end up in urban slums.
• Lack of crop diversification: food crops come first, while fodder and nitrogen-fixing legumes are neglected, to the soil’s cost.
• Low productivity: yields of most crops remain below international standards, and better inputs reach only some regions and richer farmers.
• Government neglect:
  • Plans after the first favoured industry, and prices have often been unremunerative. Debt and distress have driven farmer suicides even in richer regions such as Punjab and Maharashtra.
  • Later Plans gave agriculture more weight. Crop insurance claims paid exceeded Rs 1.90 lakh crore by March 2026.
• Weak research, training and extension: laboratories and fields are poorly connected, and small farmers seldom hear of new findings, so trained field workers are badly needed.

India’s Position in World Agriculture

• Ranks shift with each year’s data, so the table sets an older listing based on the Food and Agriculture Organization (about 2017) beside the latest official statement (March 2026).

• Cement appears on the older list as well: India is the second largest producer, next to China, though cement is an industrial product.