< Previous | Contents | Next >
The set and combination of crops which farmers opt for in a particular region, in their farm practices, is cropping pattern of the region. Multiplicity of cropping systems has been one of main features of Indian agriculture and it is attributed to rainfed agriculture and prevailing socio-economic situations of the farming community.
The cropping pattern in India has undergone significant changes over time. As the cultivated area remains more or less constant, the increased demand for food, because of increase in population and urbanisation, puts agricultural
land under stress, resulting in crop intensification and crop substitution of food crops with commercial crops.
Cropping systems of a region are decided, by and large, by a number of soil and climatic parameters, which determine the overall agro-ecological setting for nourishment and appropriateness of a crop or set of crops for cultivation. Nevertheless, at farmers’ level, potential productivity and monetary benefits act as guiding principles, while opting for a particular crop or a cropping system. These decisions with respect to choice of crops and cropping systems are further narrowed down under influence of several other forces related to infrastructure facilities, socio-economic and technological factors, all operating interactively at the micro-level. These factors are:
(i) Goegraphical factors: Soil, landforms, precipitation, moisture, altitude, etc.
(ii) Socio-cultural factors: Food habits, festivals, tradition, etc.
(iii) Infrastructure factors: Irrigation, transport, storage, trade and marketing, post-harvest handling and processing, etc.
(iv) Economic factors: Financial resource base, land ownership, size and type of land holding, household needs of food, fodder, fuel, fibre and finance, labour availability, etc.
(v) Technological factors: Improved varieties of seeds and plants, mechanisation, plant protection, access to information, etc.
Multiplicity of cropping systems has been one of the main features of Indian agriculture. This may be attributed to the following two major factors:
(i) Rainfed agriculture still accounts for over 92.8 million hectare or 65 per cent of the cropped area. A large diversity of cropping systems exists under rainfed and dryland areas with an over-riding practice of intercropping, due to greater risks involved in cultivating larger area under a particular crop.
(ii) Due to prevailing socio-economic situations, such as, dependency of large population on agriculture, small land-holding size, very high population pressure on land resource, etc.
Improving household food security has been an issue of supreme importance to many million farmers of India, with the following farm holdings—
(a) 56.15 million marginal (<1.0 ha),
(b) 17.92 million small (1.0–2.0 ha), and
(c) 13.25 million semi-medium (2.0–4.0 ha).
They together are 90 per cent of the 97.15 million operational holdings. An important consequence of this has been that crop production in India remained to be considered, by and large, a subsistence rather than commercia l activity. One of the typical characteristics of subsistence farming is that most of the farmers resort to grow a number of crops on their farm holdings, primarily to fulfil their household needs and follow the practice of rotating a particular crop combination over a period of 3–4 year, interchangeably on different farm fields.
Under the influence of all the above factors, te cropping systems remain dynamic in time and space, making it difficult to precisely determine their spread using conventional methods, over a large territory. However, it has been estimated that more than 250 double cropping systems are followed throughout the country. Based on the rationale of spread of crops in each district in the country, 30 important cropping systems have been identified— rice-wheat, rice-rice, rice-gram, rice-mustard, rice-groundnut, rice-sorghum, pearlmillet-gram, pearl millet-mustard, pearl millet-sorghum, cotton-wheat, cotton-gram, cotton-sorghum, cotton-safflower, cotton-groundnut, maize- wheat, maize-gram, sugarcane-wheat, soybean-wheat, sorghum-sorghum, groundnut-wheat, sorghum-groundnut, groundnut-rice, sorghum-wheat, sorghum-gram, pigeonpea-sorghum, groundnut, sorghum-rice, groundnut- sorghum and soybean-gram.
Changes in the Cropping Patterns
Due to various reasons, the cropping pattern of Indian farmers have undergone changes over the time—we can see them in following three phases.
Pre-Green Revolution Period: In this phase we see Indian farmers going in
for a cropping system (generally), which was primarily decided by the socio- cultural and economic factors—more or less they were closer to being sustainable as they had developed through the long process of trial and error of their forefathers. A combination of crops we see being grown by farmers across the country with judicious mixture of crops till the Green Revolution. This was a period of subsistence farming with high dependency of population for livelihood on it. The nature of the cropping pattern was too stubborn to change by incentives.
Green Revolution Period: Under the spell of the New Agricultural Strategy (NAS), more popularly as the Green Revolution, since 1965 onwards, we see a major shift in the cropping pattern of Indian farmers. The main forces of change were economic, infrastructural and technological. Initiation of high yeilding varieties of seeds, financial supports of chemical and other inputs together with the provisions of minimum support price (MSP) gave major shift to the farmers’ choices of crops. In the GR regions we see a highly repetitive kind of cropping pattern with the ‘wheat-rice’ having predominance. In coming times, the Government of India started announcing MSPs for many other crops, which had its own impact on the farmers’ choices of crops in their cropping systems.
This period was primarily guided by the singular objective of attaining self- sufficiency in food, which may lead the nation to attain food security. By the late 1980s, India was able to manage self-sufficiecy in foodgrains. We see the emergence of big farmers in the GR regions for whom at least farming did not remain subsistence —commercial dimension enters the Indian farm practices, for the first time.
This is the period when the traditional cropping pattern of India got exposed to new inputs of farming and geographical dimensions of crop selection were undermined. Soon (by
1996–97), the government came to know that the GR farm practices were ecologically damaging and unsustainable. The Government of India officially adopts the idea of sustainable agriculture by 1997.
Reform Period: Another wave of change in the cropping pattern comes with the process of economic reforms commencing in 1991, which brings in new opprotunities together with the challenges in the area of farm sector:
• The issue of food security continued to give pressure on policymakers as foodgrains production was not able to keep pace with the population growth rate. The situation becomes even more serious with Food Rights (NFSA) given to a large population of the country recently.
• Globalisation brought in new opportunities of farm exports together with the challenge of cheap production (need of farm mechanisation and commercial farming so that Indian farm products can compete in the global market) in wake of the agricultural provisions of the World Trade Organisation. It made India think of mobilising huge investments in the sector. India accepts agriculture as an industry (2000) giving green signal to corporate and contract farmings.
• Ecologically sustainable farming becomes the need of the hour due to ensuing danger of climate change and environment related constraints.
• The Government of India proposes for the Second Green Revolution in 2002 with inclusion of the genetically modified foods (GMFs).
In wake of the above-cited factors, experts and the governments expect a major change coming in the cropping patterns of the country. Now, the issue is, how to face up the emerging challenges together with making farm practices and cropping patterns sustainable. Experts suggested the following steps (by late 1990s), which were discussed and almost accepted by the Planning Commission together with the Ministry of Agriculture:
(i) Putting in place the right kind of agricultural policy with the provisions of prize and punishment, inclining farmers to go for the right kind of cropping pattern.
(ii) Evolving the right trade policy, which can protect Indian farm products from the negative affects of global competition and enable Indian agriculture to expand exports.
(iii) Bringing in proper labour laws, and land leasing and acquisition policies to encourage the entry of Indian and foreign private sector in agriculture.
(iv) Keep pressurising the WTO so that a neutral and judicious regime of agricultural provisions are evolved by it accepting the realities of India’s subsistence farming and issues related with the high agriculture
subsidies, which developed countries forward to their farm sector.
(v) Evolving the right environmental policy framework for the initiation of GMFs in the farm sector and promotion to the non-GMF related reasearch and development in the country, through corporate participation.
(vi) Factoring in the issue of environment and climate change in the domain of agricultural policy framework.
(vii) Emphasising the need of farmers’ awareness and education for the changing times. For this the PRIs involvement will be crucial.
(viii) Attending to issues like plant protection, checking farm wastage, pest management, commercial production and commercial availability of green inputs.
(ix) Evolving the right kind of credit and insurance policies for the farm sector at the macro and micro levels.
(x) Immediate inclusion of other factor in the farm sector like, a national market for agricultural products, upstream and downstream requirements, proper supply chain management, logistics, agro- processing industries, storage, etc.