Chapter 11 — କୃଷି

India is an agriculturally important country. Two-thirds of its population is engaged in agricultural activities, either directly as cultivators and farm labourers or indirectly in trades that depend on the farm. Agriculture is a primary activity, one that takes its product straight from nature, and it produces most of the food that we consume. Besides food grains, it also produces raw materials for various industries: cotton for the textile mills, sugarcane for the sugar factories, jute for the jute mills, oilseeds for the oil mills, and fruit, milk and meat for the food-processing industry. Moreover, some agricultural products like tea, coffee, spices, cotton, rice and marine products are exported and earn foreign exchange. Agriculture also provides the market for industry: a good harvest means that the farmer buys cloth, cycles, fertiliser and tractors, and a bad one means the factories sell less. In short, agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy, even though its share in the national income has fallen to under a fifth as industry and services have grown.

Indian agriculture has passed through a long history. Since the days of the Indus valley civilisation, farming has been practised in the subcontinent, and the ploughs, bullocks, tanks and wells of the villages are its inheritance. Under British rule agriculture was commercialised for the export of indigo, cotton, jute and opium while food production stagnated, and famines were frequent. At Independence India had to import food. The years since have seen a transformation, and today India is the world's largest producer of milk, pulses and jute, and the second largest of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnut, vegetables, fruit and cotton.

Agriculture in India is shaped by physical factors: the monsoon, which gives most of the rain in four months and decides whether a year is good or bad; the relief, from the flat alluvial plains that are best for farming to the hills of the north-east and the plateaus of the peninsula; the soils, from the fertile alluvium and the black cotton soil to the red and laterite soils of Odisha; and the availability of irrigation. It is also shaped by human factors: the size of holdings, which are small and fragmented (the average is about one hectare); the density of population, which makes farming intensive; technology, from the wooden plough to the tractor; the market and the price the crop fetches; and government policy on credit, prices and land. The types of farming described next are the outcome of these factors acting together in different regions.

Agriculture is an age-old economic activity in our country. Over these years, cultivation methods have changed significantly depending upon the characteristics of physical environment, technological know-how and socio-cultural practices. Farming varies from subsistence to commercial type. Subsistence farming means growing food mainly for the farmer's own family, with little or nothing left for sale; commercial farming means growing crops mainly for the market. At present, in different parts of India, the following farming systems are practised.

Primitive subsistence farming is practised on small patches of land with the help of primitive tools like the hoe, the dao and the digging stick, and family or community labour. This type of farming depends upon the monsoon, the natural fertility of the soil and the suitability of other environmental conditions to the crops grown. It is the oldest form of cultivation. Its commonest form is slash and burn agriculture: farmers clear a patch of forest, burn the vegetation, and grow cereals and other food crops in the ash-enriched soil for two or three years to sustain the family; when the soil fertility decreases, the farmers shift and clear a fresh patch, and the old plot is left to regain its fertility under regrowing forest. Land productivity in this type of agriculture is low, as the farmer does not use fertilisers or other modern inputs. It is known by different names in different parts of the country: jhumming in the north-eastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland; pamlou in Manipur; dipa in the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh and in the Andaman and Nicobar islands; bewar or dahiya in Madhya Pradesh; podu or penda in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha; kumari in the Western Ghats; khil in the Himalayan belt; valre or waltre in south-eastern Rajasthan; and kuruwa in Jharkhand. In Odisha, podu cultivation is practised by the Kondh, Saora, Bonda and other tribal communities on the hill slopes of Koraput, Rayagada, Kandhamal, Gajapati and Malkangiri; it is now discouraged because the shortening of the fallow cycle destroys the forest and erodes the slopes. Around the world the same practice is called milpa in Mexico, ladang in Indonesia, roca in Brazil and masole in Central Africa.

Intensive subsistence farming is practised in areas of high population pressure on land. It is labour-intensive farming, where high doses of biochemical inputs (high-yielding seeds, chemical fertilisers, pesticides) and irrigation are used for obtaining higher production from a small plot. Though the right of inheritance leading to the division of land among successive generations has rendered land-holding size uneconomical, the farmers continue to take maximum output from the limited land in the absence of alternative sources of livelihood. Thus there is enormous pressure on agricultural land. This is the farming of the densely peopled river plains and deltas, including the paddy lands of coastal Odisha, where two or even three crops are taken in a year from the same small field.

Commercial farming is farming for the market. The main characteristic of this type of farming is the use of higher doses of modern inputs, high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, chemical fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides, and machinery, in order to obtain higher productivity and a surplus that can be sold. The degree of commercialisation of agriculture varies from one region to another. For example, rice is a commercial crop in Haryana and Punjab, where farmers grow it in large quantities for sale to the government and the market, but in Odisha it is largely a subsistence crop, grown first for the family's own consumption. Wheat in the Punjab plains, sugarcane in western Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, cotton in Gujarat, and vegetables around every city are commercial crops. Commercial farming is found where irrigation, roads, markets and credit exist, and it has grown rapidly with the spread of these facilities. In Odisha, the sugarcane of Ganjam and Bargarh, the vegetables of the Bhubaneswar–Cuttack belt and the paddy sold to the procurement centres of Bargarh and Kalahandi are commercial.

Plantation agriculture is a special type of commercial farming. In this type of farming a single crop is grown on a large area, and the plantation has an interface of agriculture and industry: the crop is processed on or near the estate. Plantations cover large tracts of land, using capital-intensive inputs with the help of migrant labourers. All the produce is used as raw material in the respective industries. In India, tea, coffee, rubber, sugarcane, banana, spices and cashew are important plantation crops. Tea in Assam and North Bengal, coffee in Karnataka and Kerala, rubber in Kerala and the Nilgiris, and cashew and coconut on the Kerala and Odisha coasts are grown in this way. Since the production is mainly for the market, a well-developed network of transport and communication connecting the plantation areas, processing industries and markets plays an important role in the development of plantations. The plantation system was introduced by the British in the nineteenth century, with the tea gardens of Assam worked by labour brought from Chhotanagpur and Odisha, and many estates are still owned by companies rather than individual farmers. In Odisha, coffee has been planted since the 1930s on the Koraput plateau at Koraput, Jeypore and Nandapur, where a thousand-metre altitude and shade trees give the right conditions; cashew plantations line the Ganjam and Puri coast and the Kandhamal hills, and tea is grown experimentally in Koraput and Kandhamal.

The types of farming thus form a scale, from the podu slope where nothing is sold to the tea estate where nothing is eaten by the grower, and the same district of Koraput has both.

India has three cropping seasons, decided by the monsoon and the temperature, and every farmer's year is organised around them. The names come from Arabic through Persian: rabi means spring and kharif means autumn, referring to the harvest.

Rabi crops are sown in winter from October to December and harvested in summer from April to June. Some of the important rabi crops are wheat, barley, peas, gram and mustard. Though these crops are grown in large parts of India, the states of the north and north-west such as Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh are important for the production of wheat and other rabi crops. The availability of precipitation during the winter months, due to the western temperate cyclones that come from the Mediterranean, helps in the success of these crops. The success of the Green Revolution in Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and parts of Rajasthan has also been an important factor in the growth of the rabi crops, because the tube wells of these states water the wheat when the winter rain fails. In Odisha the rabi season is the dry, cool season after the monsoon: pulses (moong, biri, horse gram), mustard, groundnut, sunflower, vegetables and a second rice crop are grown on the residual moisture of the paddy fields and under irrigation from the Hirakud and Mahanadi delta canals.

Kharif crops are grown with the onset of the monsoon in different parts of the country, sown in June and July and harvested in September and October. Important crops grown during this season are paddy, maize, jowar, bajra, tur (arhar), moong, urad, cotton, jute, groundnut and soyabean. Some of the most important rice-growing regions are Assam, West Bengal, the coastal regions of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra, particularly the Konkan coast, along with Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Recently, paddy has become an important crop of Punjab and Haryana too. In states like Assam, West Bengal and Odisha, three crops of paddy are grown in a year. These are called aus, aman and boro: aus is the early monsoon crop sown in April–May and cut in August, aman the main monsoon crop transplanted in July and cut in November–December, and boro the winter–summer crop grown under irrigation from January to April. In Odisha the aman rice is called sarad, the aus crop biali and the summer crop dalua. Kharif is the season of the whole of Odisha's main rice crop, of maize and ragi in the hills and of jute in the delta.

Zaid is the short season between the rabi and the kharif, in the summer months of March to June. Some of the crops produced during zaid are watermelon, muskmelon, cucumber, vegetables and fodder crops, grown on river beds and under irrigation. Sugarcane takes almost a year to grow and does not belong to any single season. The Odisha farmer's year, then, runs: sow rice with the first monsoon showers in June, transplant in July, harvest in November, sow pulses or mustard on the wet field in December, harvest in March, and grow cucumber, watermelon and vegetables on the river sands until the rains return.

Rice is the staple food crop of a majority of the people in India, and our country is the second largest producer of rice in the world after China. It is a kharif crop which requires a high temperature (above 25 °C) and high humidity with annual rainfall above 100 cm. The seedlings are raised in a nursery and transplanted by hand into fields that must stand under a few centimetres of water for most of the growing period, which is why rice is the crop of the flooded plains, deltas and terraced hillsides of the monsoon lands. It grows best on alluvial and clayey soils that hold water, from sea level to about 2,000 m in the terraces of the Himalaya and the north-eastern hills. In areas of less rainfall it grows with the help of irrigation; that is how it has become a major crop of Punjab and Haryana, whose rainfall is below 100 cm but whose tube wells and canals flood the fields from June.

Rice is grown in the plains of north and north-eastern India, the coastal areas and the deltaic regions. The leading producers are West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Assam; West Bengal is usually first, and Punjab has the highest yield per hectare because of its complete irrigation and HYV seeds. Development of a dense network of canal irrigation and tube wells has made it possible to grow rice in areas of less rainfall such as Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh and parts of Rajasthan. The Green Revolution varieties, IR-8 and its Indian successors, doubled yields after the 1960s, and India now exports large quantities of rice, including basmati.

In Odisha rice is not only the main crop but almost the whole of agriculture: it occupies about two-thirds of the cropped area and is grown in every district, from the deltas of the Mahanadi, Brahmani and Baitarani and the coastal plain of Balasore, Cuttack, Puri and Ganjam to the Hirakud command in Sambalpur and Bargarh, the Tel and Mahanadi valleys of Bolangir and Kalahandi, and the terraces of Koraput. Bargarh is called the rice bowl of Odisha. The main crop is the monsoon sarad (aman) rice; a second dalua (boro) crop is taken under irrigation in the delta and the Hirakud ayacut, and biali (aus) in the uplands. Odisha's paddy is the raw material of the rice mills and parboiled rice trade of Bargarh and Sambalpur, and Odisha is a major supplier to the central pool of the Food Corporation. Its yields, however, remain below the national average because more than half the rice area depends on the monsoon alone, floods and cyclones hit the delta, and holdings are tiny. Improving irrigation, drainage, seed and credit for the rice farmer is therefore the first task of the state's agricultural policy.

Wheat is the second most important cereal crop and the main food crop in the north and north-western parts of the country. It is a rabi crop that requires a cool growing season and bright sunshine at the time of ripening. It needs 50 to 75 cm of annual rainfall evenly distributed over the growing season, and light winter rain or irrigation at the critical stages of sowing and grain formation. The best soil is the well-drained loam of the alluvial plains and the black soil of the Deccan. There are two important wheat-growing zones in the country: the Ganga–Sutlej plains in the north-west and the black soil region of the Deccan. The major wheat-producing states are Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and parts of Madhya Pradesh; Uttar Pradesh grows the most, and Punjab and Haryana have the highest yields because of the Green Revolution. Wheat is not an important crop of Odisha, whose winter is too short and warm, though a little is grown in the western districts of Sundargarh, Sambalpur and Bolangir under irrigation.

Millets, the coarse grains jowar, bajra and ragi, are the crops of the drier and poorer lands, and though called coarse grains they have very high nutritional value. Jowar (sorghum) is the third most important food crop with respect to area and production; it is a rain-fed crop mostly grown in the moist areas which hardly need irrigation. Maharashtra is the largest producer, followed by Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Bajra (pearl millet) grows well on sandy soils and shallow black soil in the driest tracts; Rajasthan is the largest producer, followed by Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Haryana. Ragi (finger millet) is a crop of dry regions and grows well on red, black, sandy, loamy and shallow black soils; it is very rich in iron, calcium, other micro-nutrients and roughage. Karnataka is the largest producer, followed by Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Jharkhand and Arunachal Pradesh. In Odisha, ragi (locally mandia) is the staple of the tribal hills of Koraput, Rayagada, Malkangiri, Kandhamal and Gajapati, eaten as gruel, and the state's millet mission is reviving it. Millets need little water and no fertiliser, resist drought, and their revival is now a national programme for nutrition and for farming in a warming climate.

Maize is a crop that is used both as food and fodder, and increasingly as poultry feed and industrial starch. It is a kharif crop which requires a temperature between 21 °C and 27 °C and grows well in old alluvial soil. In some states like Bihar maize is grown in the rabi season also. The use of modern inputs such as HYV seeds, fertilisers and irrigation has contributed to the increasing production of maize. The major maize-producing states are Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. In Odisha maize is grown in the hill districts of Koraput, Nabarangpur (the leading maize district of the state), Rayagada and Kandhamal, and is sold to the poultry-feed industry.

Pulses are the edible seeds of leguminous plants: tur (arhar or pigeon pea), urad (black gram), moong (green gram), masur (lentil), peas and gram (chana or chickpea). India is the largest producer as well as the consumer of pulses in the world. They are the major source of protein in a vegetarian diet, and in a country where most people eat little meat, the dal on the plate is what keeps the diet balanced; a shortage of pulses raises their price and worsens the protein deficiency of the poor. Pulses are used as dal, as sprouts, in snacks and sweets, and their husk and straw feed cattle.

Pulses need less moisture and survive even in dry conditions, which is why they are the crop of the drier lands and of the rabi season on residual moisture. Being leguminous crops, all these crops except arhar help in restoring soil fertility by fixing nitrogen from the air: the bacteria in the nodules on their roots convert atmospheric nitrogen into compounds the plant uses, and what remains in the roots enriches the soil for the next crop. Therefore, these are mostly grown in rotation with other crops: a farmer who grows rice or wheat year after year exhausts the nitrogen of the soil, but a crop of moong or gram between them restores it and saves fertiliser. Pulses are grown in both seasons: tur, urad and moong are kharif crops, sown with the monsoon, while gram, masur and peas are rabi crops sown in October–November on the moisture left by the rains.

The major pulse-producing states in India are Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka; Madhya Pradesh is the largest, and gram from its black soil and from Rajasthan makes up nearly half of India's pulse output. Pulse yields are low, about 700 to 800 kg per hectare, because they are grown on the poorest land without irrigation, and production has not kept pace with population, so that India imports pulses from Canada, Myanmar and Africa. The government has raised support prices and run a pulses mission to change this.

In Odisha, pulses are the chief rabi crop after rice: moong (green gram) and biri (black gram) are sown in December on the drying paddy fields of the coastal districts of Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Puri, Ganjam and Balasore, where they ripen on the residual moisture and morning dew; arhar (harada) and horse gram (kulthi) are grown in the western and hill districts of Bolangir, Nuapada, Kalahandi and Koraput; and gram and lentil in the Hirakud area. The dalma of Odisha, a stew of arhar or moong with vegetables, is the everyday dish that uses them. Because pulses fix nitrogen and need no irrigation, expanding them on the fallow rabi fields of the state is the cheapest way to raise both the farmer's income and the soil's fertility.

Sugarcane is a tropical as well as a subtropical crop. It grows well in a hot and humid climate with a temperature of 21 °C to 27 °C and an annual rainfall between 75 cm and 100 cm; irrigation is required in the regions of low rainfall, and the crop takes ten to twelve months to mature, so it does not belong to a single season. It can be grown on a variety of soils but does best on deep alluvium and black soil, and it needs manual labour from sowing to harvesting, since the cane is planted from cuttings and cut by hand. India is the second largest producer of sugarcane after Brazil. It is the main source of sugar, gur (jaggery), khandsari and molasses, and the bagasse left after crushing fuels the mill and makes paper, while the molasses make alcohol. The major sugarcane-producing states are Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Punjab and Haryana. Uttar Pradesh grows the most, on the western Ganga plain; Maharashtra has the highest yield and the largest cooperative sugar mills. Because cane loses sugar within a day of cutting, mills stand in the cane fields. In Odisha cane is grown in Ganjam (Aska, site of one of India's first sugar mills, 1824), Bargarh, Bolangir, Nayagarh, Dhenkanal and Cuttack, mostly for gur and for a few mills.

Oilseeds yield the vegetable oil of the kitchen and the raw material of soap, cosmetics, paint and ointments, and their cake after pressing is cattle feed and manure. India is the second largest producer of groundnut in the world after China and, in general, the largest producer of oilseeds, yet it still imports a large part of its edible oil. Different oilseeds are grown covering approximately 12 per cent of the total cropped area of the country. The main oilseeds are groundnut, mustard, coconut, sesamum (til), soyabean, castor, cotton seed, linseed and sunflower. Most of them are edible and used as cooking mediums; some are used as raw material in the manufacture of soap, cosmetics and ointments. Groundnut is a kharif crop and accounts for about half of the major oilseeds produced in the country; it grows on light sandy loam with 50 to 75 cm of rain, and Gujarat is the largest producer, followed by Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Linseed and mustard are rabi crops; mustard is the oilseed of the Ganga plain, with Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh as its producers. Sesamum is a kharif crop in the north and a rabi crop in south India. Castor seed is grown both as a rabi and a kharif crop; Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh grow it. Soyabean, introduced in the 1970s, has become the largest oilseed by output, with Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra producing nearly all of it, and coconut supplies the oil of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and the Odisha coast. In Odisha groundnut is the chief oilseed, grown as a rabi crop on the sandy soils of Ganjam, Puri, Cuttack, Nayagarh and Bolangir, along with til, mustard, sunflower and niger (alasi) in the hills.

Tea cultivation is an example of plantation agriculture. It is also an important beverage crop introduced in India by the British in the 1830s in Assam, and today most of the tea plantations are owned by Indians. The tea plant grows well in tropical and subtropical climates endowed with deep and fertile well-drained soil, rich in humus and organic matter. Tea bushes require a warm and moist frost-free climate all through the year, and frequent showers evenly distributed over the year ensure the continuous growth of tender leaves, which are plucked by hand every week or two. The bushes are planted on hill slopes so that the water drains away, for tea cannot stand waterlogging. Tea is a labour-intensive industry and requires abundant, cheap and skilled labour, mostly women pluckers. Tea is processed within the tea garden to restore its freshness: the leaves are withered, rolled, fermented and dried in the estate factory within hours. The major tea-producing states are Assam (the Brahmaputra and Surma valleys, over half of India's tea), the hills of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri districts of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu (the Nilgiris) and Kerala (Munnar). Apart from these, Himachal Pradesh (Kangra), Uttarakhand, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh and Tripura are also tea-producing states. India is the second largest producer after China and a leading exporter, and Darjeeling tea has a Geographical Indication.

Coffee in India is known for its good quality. The Arabica variety, initially brought from Yemen, is produced in the country and is in great demand all over the world; the hardier Robusta is grown at lower altitudes. Cultivation was introduced on the Baba Budan hills of Karnataka in the seventeenth century by the Sufi saint Baba Budan, and even today its cultivation is confined to the Nilgiri hills of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where it needs a warm climate of 15 to 28 °C, 150 to 250 cm of rain, well-drained slopes at 600 to 1,600 m and shade trees. Karnataka (Kodagu, Chikkamagaluru, Hassan) grows about 70 per cent of India's coffee, followed by Kerala (Wayanad) and Tamil Nadu. Odisha's coffee, on the Koraput plateau, is small but of good quality and is sold under the Koraput name.

Horticulture is the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, flowers, spices and plantation crops. India is the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world after China, and horticulture now earns more than food grains. India is a producer of tropical as well as temperate fruits: mangoes of Maharashtra (Alphonso), Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal; oranges of Nagpur and Cherrapunji (Meghalaya); bananas of Kerala, Mizoram, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu; litchi and guava of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar; pineapples of Meghalaya; grapes of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Maharashtra; and apples, pears, apricots and walnuts of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, which are in great demand all over the world. India produces about 13 per cent of the world's vegetables and is an important producer of pea, cauliflower, onion, cabbage, tomato, brinjal and potato. Spices, pepper, cardamom, turmeric, ginger and chilli, come from Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and the Odisha hills, where Kandhamal turmeric has a Geographical Indication and Koraput ginger, Ganjam cashew and the mangoes and vegetables of the coast make horticulture a growing part of the state's farming.

Rubber is an equatorial crop, but under special conditions it is also grown in tropical and subtropical areas. It requires a moist and humid climate with rainfall of more than 200 cm and a temperature above 25 °C, and it must be free of frost. The latex is tapped by cutting the bark of the tree in a spiral groove early in the morning and collecting the white sap in a cup. Rubber is an important industrial raw material: tyres and tubes take most of it, and footwear, belts, hoses, gloves and a thousand articles the rest. It is mainly grown in Kerala, which produces about nine-tenths of India's rubber, in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and the Andaman and Nicobar islands and the Garo hills of Meghalaya, and new plantations have been raised in Tripura, Assam and Odisha's Gajapati and Rayagada hills. India is among the leading producers of natural rubber, but consumes more than it grows.

Fibre crops: cotton, jute, hemp and natural silk are the four major fibre crops grown in India. The first three are derived from the crops grown in the soil; the last is obtained from the cocoons of silkworms fed on green leaves, especially mulberry, and the rearing of silkworms for the production of silk fibre is known as sericulture. Odisha's tasar silk of Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar comes from worms fed on asan and arjun trees.

Cotton: India is believed to be the original home of the cotton plant, and cotton is one of the main raw materials of the cotton textile industry. India is the second largest producer of cotton after China. Cotton grows well in the drier parts of the black cotton soil of the Deccan plateau, which holds moisture through the dry season. It requires a high temperature, light rainfall or irrigation, 210 frost-free days and bright sunshine for its growth, and the bolls are picked by hand over several rounds. It is a kharif crop and requires six to eight months to mature. The major cotton-producing states are Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh; Gujarat and Maharashtra together grow more than half. Cotton is a minor crop in Odisha, grown in Kalahandi, Bolangir, Rayagada, Nuapada and Subarnapur on the black soils of the west.

Jute is known as the golden fibre. It grows well on well-drained fertile soils in the flood plains where soils are renewed every year, and needs a high temperature above 25 °C, heavy rain of 150 cm or more and humidity during the growing period. After cutting, the stalks are retted in standing water for two to three weeks and the fibre is stripped and washed by hand. West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Odisha and Meghalaya are the major jute-producing states, with West Bengal alone growing about three-fourths on the Hugli delta. It is used in making gunny bags, mats, ropes, yarn, carpets and other artefacts. Due to its high cost, it is losing market to synthetic fibres and packing materials, particularly nylon, though its biodegradability is bringing it back for eco-friendly bags. In Odisha jute is grown in the flood plains of Balasore, Bhadrak, Cuttack, Kendrapara and Jajpur, and mesta, a coarser fibre, in the west.

Odisha is an agricultural state: about 60 per cent of its people depend on farming, though agriculture gives only about a fifth of the state's income, which tells us that productivity per farmer is low. The state's agriculture is shaped by three physical facts. First, the monsoon: Odisha receives about 150 cm of rain, almost all between June and September, and the coast is struck by cyclones (1999, Phailin 2013, Fani 2019) and floods of the Mahanadi, Brahmani and Baitarani, while the western districts of Bolangir, Kalahandi and Nuapada suffer drought in years when the monsoon weakens. Second, the relief and soil: the coastal plain and deltas have fertile alluvium and are the granary; the plateaus and hills of the interior have red and laterite soils of low fertility; the black soils of Kalahandi and Bolangir grow cotton and pulses. Third, irrigation reaches only about a third of the cropped area, from the Hirakud, Rengali, Upper Indravati and Upper Kolab reservoirs, the Mahanadi delta canals, tanks, lift points and shallow tube wells; two-thirds of the fields wait for the rain.

Rice is grown on about two-thirds of the cropped area and dominates the farmer's year, as described earlier; Bargarh, Sambalpur, Kalahandi, Balasore, Cuttack, Puri and Ganjam are the rice districts, and the state contributes generously to the national food stock. The other crops fill the seasons and the regions: pulses (moong, biri, arhar, kulthi) in the rabi on the coast and the west; oilseeds (groundnut, til, mustard, sunflower, niger) in Ganjam, Puri, Bolangir and the hills; maize and ragi in Koraput, Nabarangpur, Rayagada and Kandhamal; sugarcane in Ganjam, Bargarh and Nayagarh; jute and mesta in the north coastal flood plains; cotton in Kalahandi, Bolangir and Rayagada; vegetables around every town and especially in the Bhubaneswar–Cuttack–Puri belt, Keonjhar and Kandhamal; fruit, mango, banana, cashew, coconut and citrus, on the coast and in the Eastern Ghats; spices, the turmeric of Kandhamal and ginger of Koraput; and coffee on the Koraput plateau. Podu cultivation survives on the hill slopes.

The problems of Odisha's agriculture are the dependence on the monsoon and the frequency of flood, cyclone and drought; small and fragmented holdings averaging about one hectare, with a large share of landless labourers and sharecroppers; low use of HYV seed, fertiliser and machinery; poor drainage in the delta and waterlogging in the Hirakud command; inadequate credit and storage, which force distress sales; and the migration of farm workers to Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh in the lean season. The state's response has been to extend irrigation through lift points and check dams, to promote a second crop of pulses and vegetables, to procure paddy at the minimum support price through cooperatives, to distribute seed and pump sets under its own farmer schemes, to revive millets in the hills, to promote organic turmeric and horticulture, and to insure crops against calamity. Turning the state's rain and soil into two secure crops a year is the goal.

Agriculture has been practised in India for thousands of years, but sustained uses of land without compatible techno-institutional changes have hindered the pace of agricultural development. In spite of the development of sources of irrigation, most of the farmers in large parts of the country still depend upon the monsoon and the natural fertility of the soil in order to carry on their agriculture. For a growing population this poses a serious challenge, and agriculture which provides livelihood to more than 60 per cent of the population needs serious technical and institutional reforms. Both kinds have been made since Independence.

Institutional reforms concern the ownership of land, credit, prices and marketing. Collectivisation, consolidation of holdings, cooperation and the abolition of zamindari were given priority to bring about institutional reforms in the country after Independence: the zamindars and other intermediaries between the state and the tiller were abolished, tenants were given security and ceilings were set on the size of holdings, though the surplus land actually distributed was small. Land reform was the main focus of the First Five Year Plan. The right of inheritance had already led to the fragmentation of land holdings, so consolidation of holdings, the exchange of scattered plots for one compact farm, was undertaken, most successfully in Punjab and Haryana and least in Odisha and Bihar. Cooperative societies were formed to give credit, seed and fertiliser and to market the crop, and the sugar cooperatives of Maharashtra and the milk cooperatives of Gujarat (Amul) became models.

Technological reforms concern the way crops are grown. The Green Revolution based on the use of package technology, HYV seeds of wheat and rice, chemical fertilisers, pesticides and assured irrigation, and the White Revolution (Operation Flood) in milk were some of the strategies initiated in the 1960s and 1970s to improve the lot of Indian agriculture; they made India self-sufficient in food grains and the largest milk producer in the world. But these were concentrated in a few areas, Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, the deltas of the south, and in a few crops. Consequently, a comprehensive land development programme was initiated in the 1980s and 1990s, which included both institutional and technical reforms: provision for crop insurance against drought, flood, cyclone, fire and disease; the establishment of Grameen (rural) banks, cooperative societies and banks for providing loan facilities to the farmers at lower rates of interest; the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) and the Personal Accident Insurance Scheme (PAIS); special weather bulletins and agricultural programmes for farmers on radio and television; and the announcement by the government of minimum support prices (MSP) and remunerative procurement prices for important crops to check the exploitation of farmers by speculators and middlemen. Agricultural universities and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), with the Central Rice Research Institute at Cuttack, breed the seeds; soil health cards, drip irrigation, farm machinery hire and e-marketing (e-NAM) are the newest measures. The Bhoodan–Gramdan movement of Vinoba Bhave, in which landowners voluntarily gave land to the landless, was a moral experiment of the same period, started in Telangana in 1951.

The Green Revolution is the name given to the rapid rise in food-grain production that began in India in the mid-1960s. Two bad monsoons in 1965 and 1966 had forced India to live 'from ship to mouth' on American wheat, and the government, led by the agricultural scientist M. S. Swaminathan and the minister C. Subramaniam, adopted a new strategy: dwarf, high-yielding varieties of wheat bred in Mexico by Norman Borlaug and of rice bred at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines (IR-8, 'miracle rice') were introduced, together with the package of inputs they needed, chemical fertilisers, pesticides, assured irrigation from canals and tube wells, credit and support prices. The new seeds converted fertiliser and water into grain instead of straw and could carry two or three times the yield of the tall local varieties without falling over.

The results were dramatic. Wheat production rose from about 11 million tonnes in 1965 to over 100 million tonnes today, and rice from 35 million to over 120 million tonnes; India became self-sufficient in food grains by the 1970s, built buffer stocks that saw it through droughts, and later became an exporter. Famine, a regular visitor under British rule, has not returned. Farmers in the Green Revolution areas prospered, bought tractors, pump sets and consumer goods, and the rural market for industry grew.

The limitations were equally clear. The revolution was confined to a few regions, Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, and later the irrigated deltas of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, where irrigation was assured; the rain-fed lands of eastern India, including most of Odisha, and the dry Deccan gained little, so regional inequality widened. It was confined to a few crops, wheat and rice, so that pulses, oilseeds and millets were neglected and their prices rose. It favoured large farmers who could afford the inputs, while small farmers and labourers gained less, so that inequality within villages grew. And its environmental cost has been heavy: the over-pumping of groundwater has lowered the water table across Punjab and Haryana; chemical fertilisers and pesticides have degraded the soil, polluted the water and entered the food chain; the monoculture of rice and wheat has destroyed crop diversity; and the burning of rice straw pollutes the air of north India every November. In Odisha the Green Revolution reached the Hirakud command and the delta, raising paddy yields, but left the uplands and hills as they were.

The answer proposed for the future is an Evergreen Revolution, Swaminathan's phrase: raising yields with less water and fewer chemicals, spreading the gains to the eastern rain-fed states through better seeds for their conditions, restoring pulses and millets, and organic and precision farming, so that productivity is raised without destroying the ecological base that the next generation of farmers will need.

Globalisation and agriculture. Under globalisation, particularly after 1990, the farmers in India have been exposed to new challenges. Globalisation is not a new phenomenon for Indian agriculture: it was there at the time of colonisation. In the nineteenth century, when European traders came to India, at that time too Indian spices were exported to different countries of the world, and farmers in south India were encouraged to grow these crops. Till today it is one of the important items of export from India. During the British period cotton belts of India attracted the British, and ultimately cotton was exported to Britain as a raw material for their textile industries. Cotton textile industry in Manchester and Liverpool flourished due to the availability of good quality cotton from India. Champaran in Bihar saw farmers forced to grow indigo for the dye. Today, despite being an important producer of rice, cotton, rubber, tea, coffee, jute and spices, our agricultural products are not able to compete with the developed countries because of the highly subsidised agriculture in those countries: an American or European farmer receives support that lets him sell cheaper than an Indian farmer whose costs are lower. Indian farmers also face the fluctuation of world prices, the entry of imported oil and pulses, and the patents of seed companies. On the other side, globalisation has opened markets for basmati, spices, fruit and organic produce, and contract farming and food processing link the farmer to distant buyers.

Food security. India has to feed one of the largest populations in the world, and food security means that every person at all times has physical and economic access to enough safe food. The country produces enough grain; the problem is distribution and purchasing power. The Food Corporation of India procures wheat and rice at the minimum support price from surplus states, including Odisha, holds buffer stocks and supplies the Public Distribution System of ration shops, which sell grain to poor households at subsidised prices; the National Food Security Act of 2013 made this a legal right for two-thirds of the population, and the mid-day meal in schools and the ICDS for infants are part of the same system. Yet the yield of Indian farms is still below that of many countries, the area under cultivation cannot grow, and the population continues to increase, so the sustained rise of productivity remains the condition of food security.

Sustainable agriculture. The Green Revolution showed that yields cannot be raised by chemicals and water alone without damaging the land. The way forward is organic farming using compost, green manure and biological pest control, which India's small farmers can adopt and which fetches higher prices, as Kandhamal turmeric shows; the diversification of crops from rice and wheat towards pulses, oilseeds, millets, vegetables, fruit, flowers, medicinal plants and animal husbandry, which earn more per hectare and use less water; micro-irrigation by drip and sprinkler; watershed management and rain-water harvesting for rain-fed lands; the conservation of traditional seed varieties; and the raising of incomes through processing, cold storage and direct marketing. This is the change Indian agriculture, and Odisha's in particular, must now make: from growing more to growing wisely.