agriculture

• Primitive Subsistence Farming:

  • Also called slash and burn agriculture
  • Practiced on small patches using primitive tools like hoe, dao, and digging sticks
  • Family and community labor involved
  • Production depends on fertility, monsoon, and environmental conditions
• Intensive Subsistence Farming:

  • Practiced in areas with high production pressure
  • Uses biochemical inputs and modern irrigation techniques
• Commercial Farming:

  • Uses high doses of HYV seeds, fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides
  • Plantation farming involves growing a single crop over a large area
  • Important plantation crops in India: tea, coffee, rubber, sugarcane, banana
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  Rabi crops:

  • Sown in winter (October to December) and harvested in summer (April to June)
  • Major crops: wheat, barley, peas, gram, mustard
  • Grown in states like Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, etc.
• Maize

  • Kharif crop requiring temperature between 21°C to 27°C
  • Grows well in old alluvial soil
  • Major producing states: Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh
• Rice:

  • Second-largest producer in the world
  • Kharif crop requiring high temperature and high humidity
  • Major production in north and north-eastern India, coastal areas, and deltaic regions
• • Castor seed grown as rabi and kharif crop
• Sugarcane:

  • Tropical and subtropical crop
  • Requires hot and humid climate, rainfall between 75cm and 100cm
  • Second-largest producer in the world
  • Major producers: Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Punjab, Haryana
• Tea:

  • Labour-intensive industry
  • Major producing states: Assam, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura
  • Third-largest producer in 2008

  Coffee:

  • Produced 3.2% of world production in 2008
  • Cultivated in Nilgiris in Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu
• Non-food crops:

  Rubber:

  • Grows in moist and humid climate with rainfall over 200 cm and temperature above 25°C
  • Major producers: Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Garo hills of Meghalaya
  • Fourth among world's natural rubber producers

  Fiber crop:

  • Silk obtained from silkworms feeding on mulberry leaves
  • Cotton second-largest producer after China in 2008
  • Major states: Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh
• • Jute known as golden fiber, major producing states: West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Odisha, Meghalaya
• Kharif crops:

  • Grown with the onset of monsoon and harvested in September-October
  • Important crops: paddy, maize, jowar, bajra, tur, moong, urad, cotton, jute, groundnut, soyabean
• Pulses:

  • Major pulses: tur, urad, moong, masur, peas
  • Grown in rotation with cereal crops
  • Major producing states: Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka
• Wheat:

  • Requires 50 to 75 cm of annual rainfall
  • Grown in Ganga-Satluj plains and Deccan black soil region
  • Major producing states: Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh
• Millets:

  • Jowar, bajra, ragi are important millets
  • Grown in states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, etc.
• Oil seeds:

  • Groundnut, mustard, coconut, sesamum, soyabean, castor seeds, cotton seeds, linseed, sunflower
  • Groundnut is a kharif crop, major producer: Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu
  • Linseed and mustard are rabi crops
  • Sesamum is a kharif crop in the north and rabi crop in south India