INDIAN AGRICULTURE SYSTEM
Last Updated: Mar 10, 2025
Indian Agricultural System
The Agriculture System of India is undergoing significant transformations due to liberalization and globalization, impacting the socio-economic environments of the population. About 75% of people reside in rural areas, relying heavily on the indian agricultural system. Approximately 43% of India’s geographical area is dedicated to agricultural activities. Historically, the Agriculture System of India consisted of small plots of land cultivated by individual farmers using traditional methods. However, with the advent of the Green Revolution, India has achieved self-sufficiency and surplus food production, resulting in a substantial buffer stock of foodstuffs and enabling the country to export food grains.
Role and Importance of Agriculture in India’s Economy
It provides about 65% of the livelihood, accounts for 27% of GDP, contributes 21% of Total Exports, and Supplies Raw materials to Industries. The growth Rate in production is 5.7%, and food grain production is 211.17 m. There are some technologies that are used for Sustainable Agriculture Development. They are: Biotechnology, Pre & post harvesting technology, Energy saving technology, Environment protection technology, Information and Communication technology, GIS & RS technology, Internet/Intranet Technology.
Importance of Irrigation
Irrigation in India refers to the supply of water from Indian rivers, tanks, wells, canals, and other artificial projects for the purpose of cultivation and agricultural activities. In a country such as India, 64% of cultivated land is dependent on monsoons. The economic significance of irrigation in India is namely, to reduce over dependence on monsoons, advanced agricultural productivity, bringing more land under cultivation, reducing instability in output levels, creation of job opportunities, electricity and transport facilities, control of floods and prevention of droughts.
Challenges Facing the Indian Agricultural System
Infrasturcture and knowledge of Deficit
The critical issues that plague Indian agriculture at present are the knowledge deficit and infrastructure deficit, especially in the rural areas. Problems related to irrigation infrastructure, market infrastructure, and transport infrastructure add significant cost to farmers’ operations. Another issue is the lack of delivery mechanisms.
Inadequate Government Support
There are a number of schemes aimed towards developing agriculture. We don’t have effective delivery mechanisms that can translate those into effective facilitation at the ground level in terms of increasing productivity or decreasing cost or increasing price realization. Inadequate government support exacerbates these issues.
Need For Government Intervention
Government failure is a major concern in agriculture because the high risks involved make help and facilitation necessary. Like any other business enterprise, agriculture is subjected to high risks because of the volatile nature of the factors involved. For instance, weather is often a problem – you have droughts in one year and heavy rains in the next. In both cases, farmers lose out, hence, they have to look for a normal period to make money. The government, therefore, has to play a major role in providing support to farmers. This is true all over the world, and there is hardly any country where government intervention is not present.
There may, of course, be variations in the extent of intervention, but if you check the situation in most countries or regions, including developed ones like the US, Canada, and the European Union, you see substantial intervention by the government. Thus, government facilitation is essential for sound agricultural development.
Surface Irrigation Management
Irrigation in India can be broadly classified into two parts: surface irrigation and groundwater irrigation. The issues related to each of these are completely different. As far as surface irrigation is concerned, there are a few major problems. One is the system management itself. We do not effectively manage water bodies in terms of how much water is stored, how much is being used for irrigation, or what value we can add to this water. This is partly because it is seen more as an engineering kind of work rather than looking holistically at its main purpose, which is irrigation.
Key Challenges In Surface Tension
We, therefore, do not have the mindset to make the best use of water for irrigation purposes. Consequently, water use efficiency is very poor in India and remains a major concern. According to many estimates, the extent of area irrigated compared to the capacity built is very low, averaging about 40%. We have problems like water logging at the head part of the water bodies and deficit at the tail-ends. Big dams have their own problems, like rehabilitation of people, ecological concerns, and whether they adequately serve their purpose.
So, these are issues concerning surface irrigation.
Groundwater Irrigation
If you look at groundwater, the major issue is equity. Those who have better abilities to extract water take away disproportionately from groundwater aquifiers. This gives rise to various problems. One is that if groundwater is closer to the coastal area, groundwater may get mixed with salt, which affects everybody and is a negative externality. In many other places, the groundwater level goes down drastically, and often the wells go dry, making it difficult to get even drinking water. So, we have dual problems related to the availability of drinking water as well as access to groundwater for the poor.
Agriculture continues to play a major role in the Indian Economy.
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12 Responses to INDIAN AGRICULTURE SYSTEM
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marketing problems of ground nut cultivators
marketing problems of ground nut cultivators
Green revolution plays a major part in self sustainability..i agree that…but i had only helped the farmers of wet land and garden land…the farmers of dry land still depending on age old varieties and technologies…
i want the details about agriculture declination in india
sir
I am preparing for the GD in NIAM Jaipur, So i want some topics for preparation which are related to it.
please tell me some important latest GD topics for b.tech
indian agriculture was the best one… but due to biotechnology its changing
It is very important that our agriculture system should improve more in order to increase the growth of our country !
In India, agriculture a has a Significant History and it plays a very Important role in socio-economice grwoth of our country. It should be promoted to become even more powerful and governement should take some Initiation to help the farmerw of our country.
Indian agriculture system had improved over a decade for eg.now there are call centres ,farmers are more aware but now over excessive use of pesticides have put us in another danger . In recent survey PUNJAB is the most cancer affected state of India .So,we should not rely on using pesticides but on more natural ways to curb this menace.
Indian agriculture system should become more powerful for the growth of our nation.
No doubt agriculture play a major role in India,many of the people are still dependent on agriculture,but as said above there are certain things which are needed to be looked upon among which major concern is government failure.