Geography Chapter 04: Agriculture
Class 10 Geography NCERTIndia is an agriculturally important country. Two-thirds of its population is engaged in agricultural activities. Agriculture is a primary activity, which produces most of the food that we consume. Besides food grains, it also produces raw material for various industries.
Farming varies from subsistence to commercial type.
Primitive Subsistence Farming: This type of farming is still practised in few pockets of India. Primitive subsistence agriculture is practised on small patches of land with the help of primitive tools like hoe, dao and digging sticks, and family or community labour.
Intensive Subsistence Farming: This type of farming is practised in areas of high population pressure on land. It is labour-intensive farming, where high doses of biochemical inputs and irrigation are used for obtaining higher production.
Commercial Farming: The main characteristic of this type of farming is the use of higher doses of modern inputs, e.g. high yielding variety (HYV) seeds, chemical fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides in order to obtain higher productivity.
Plantation is also a type of commercial farming. In this type of farming, a single crop is grown on a large area. The plantation has an interface of agriculture and industry.
India has three cropping seasons - rabi, kharif and zaid. Rabi crops are sown in winter from October to December and harvested in summer from April to June. Kharif crops are grown with the onset of monsoon in different parts of the country and these are harvested in September-October. In between the rabi and the kharif seasons, there is a short season during the summer months known as the Zaid season.
Major crops grown in India are rice, wheat, millets, pulses, tea, coffee, sugarcane, oil seeds, cotton and jute.