03/11/2021 - Agriculture

KEY POINTS

·        India is a subtropical country with 15 agro-climatic zones and primarily dependent on the south-west monsoon.

·        Of India’s 329 million hectares of geographical area, nearly 140 million hectares are net sown area and out of it 70 million hectares is rain-fed.

·        The average size of Indian farm holding is about one hectare. Rain-fed areas produce nearly 90 per cent of millets, 80 per cent of oilseeds and pulses, 60 per cent of cotton and support nearly 40 per cent of our population and 60 per cent of our livestock.

·        Agro-ecology celebrates crop diversity but main food staples of the world are: rice, wheat, maize, cassava, potato etc., when there are nearly 30,000 edible plants.

·        It seeks low energy external inputs, agro-ecological services as enterprises, soil covered for a large period of time through multiple cropping, niche crops and regional markets.

·        Rain-fed areas are ecologically fragile and hence vulnerable to climate change and they are also largely inhabited by poorer farmers.

·        Introducing agro-ecology in rain-fed areas could thus be a good policy option. The design elements of such interventions must start from seeds and end with markets.

·        Codifying endemic land races, collecting their seeds, creating a repository of indigenous knowledge curated from formal and civil society, improving land races through plant-selection or plant-breeding.

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