Agriculture

• Agriculture involves three types of economic activities: primary, secondary, and tertiary
• Primary activities include extraction and production of natural resources like agriculture, fishing, and gathering
• Secondary activities involve processing these resources, such as manufacturing steel, baking bread, and weaving cloth
• Tertiary activities provide support to the primary and secondary sectors through services like transport, trade, banking, insurance, and advertising
• Agriculture is a primary activity that requires favorable topography of soil and climate
• Important inputs in farming include seeds, fertilisers, machinery, and labour
• Operations in farming involve ploughing, sowing, irrigation, weeding, and harvesting
• Outputs from farming systems include crops, wool, dairy, and poultry products
• Types of farming: Subsistence farming and Commercial farming
• Subsistence farming is classified as intensive subsistence and primitive subsistence farming
• Intensive subsistence agriculture is practiced to meet the needs of the farmer's family using simple tools and more labor
• Primitive subsistence agriculture includes shifting cultivation and nomadic herding
• Shifting Cultivation involves clearing land, mixing ashes with soil, growing crops, and moving to new plots when soil fertility is lost
• Nomadic Herding involves moving animals for fodder and water along defined routes in response to climatic constraints and terrain
• Main crops in different types of farming
• Main crop in Subsistence farming: Rice
• Other crops in Subsistence farming: Wheat, maize, pulses, oilseeds
• Main crop in Shifting Cultivation: Maize, yam, potatoes, cassava
• Main animals in Nomadic Herding: Sheep, camel, yak, goats
• Areas where different types of farming are prevalent
• Subsistence farming: Thickly populated areas of monsoon regions in South, South-East, and East Asia
• Shifting Cultivation: Thickly forested areas of the Amazon basin, tropical Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, Northeast India
• Nomadic Herding: Semi-arid and arid regions of Sahara, Central Asia, some parts of India like Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir
• Main crops in Commercial farming
• Crops in Commercial grain farming: Wheat, maize
• Crops in Plantation Agriculture: Tea, coffee, sugarcane, cashew, rubber, banana, cotton
• Major food crops: wheat, rice, maize, millet
• Fibre crops: jute, cotton
• Important beverage crops: tea, coffee
• Details about specific crops
• Rice: staple diet of tropical regions, grows best in alluvial clayey soil, leading producers are China, India, Japan, Sri Lanka, Egypt
• Wheat: requires moderate temperature, bright sunshine at harvest, thrives in well-drained loamy soil, extensively grown in various countries including USA, Canada, India
• Maize: requires moderate temperature, rainfall, lots of sunshine, grown in various countries including North America, Brazil, China, India, Mexico
• Cotton: requires high temperature, light rainfall, frost-free days, grows best on black and alluvial soils, leading producers are China, USA, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt
• Jute: known as 'Golden Fibre', grows well on alluvial soil, requires high temperatures, heavy rainfall, humid climate, leading producers are India, Bangladesh
• Coffee: requires warm, wet climate, well-drained loamy soil, grown on hill slopes, leading producers are Brazil, Columbia, India
• Tea: grown on plantations, requires cool climate, high rainfall, well-drained loamy soils, leading producers are Kenya, India, China, Sri Lanka
• Efforts in agricultural development to increase farm production for growing population demand
• Ways to increase farm production include expanding cropped area, growing more crops, improving irrigation, using fertilisers, high yielding seeds
• Aim of agricultural development is to increase food security