Land Resources and Agriculture

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Geography Class XII (India: People and Economy), Chapter 3.

Can a country's forest area grow without a single new tree?

In India, yes, and that one puzzle explains how land records work. The forest share in official land records has gone up since 1950–51, yet nobody is claiming that India has suddenly planted a forest the size of a large state. The records count land that the government has marked out for forest, whether or not trees are standing on it. This chapter teaches you to read land statistics like that: what is counted, what is not, and why the numbers move.

Reporting area is not geographical area

Two different totals are in use, and CUET likes to test the difference.

The nine land use categories add up to the reporting area, which is why every percentage in this chapter is "per cent of reporting area".

The nine land use categories

Learn these as a set. The three fallow and waste categories are the ones students confuse.

The fallow ladder. Take one plot and leave it alone. In the first year it is current fallow, because fallowing is a deliberate practice that lets the land recover fertility naturally. After more than a year but less than five, it is fallow other than current fallow. Once it crosses five years it is culturable wasteland, and it needs reclamation before it can grow anything again.

Pause and predict: a field has been left uncultivated for exactly four years. Which category does it belong to?

Check your answer: fallow other than current fallow. It is more than one year and less than five. Only beyond five years does it become culturable wasteland.

How India's land use has changed since 1950–51

Land is fixed in area, but an economy keeps changing. Three changes squeeze land use.

First, the size of the economy grows with population, income and technology, so pressure on land rises and marginal land is pulled into use. Second, the composition changes: the secondary and tertiary sectors grow much faster than agriculture, so farmland near cities turns into buildings. Third, agriculture's share of output falls but its pressure on land does not. The share of people who depend on farming falls far more slowly than farming's share of GDP, and the number of mouths to feed keeps rising.

Five categories rose and four fell between 1950–51 and 2019–20. All figures are per cent of reporting area.

Why the current fallow rise tells you little. You cannot read a trend from two points when the series itself jumps around with the monsoon. Net area sown, by contrast, had been slowly decreasing earlier, and most of that decline came from land moving to non agricultural use.

Actual increase versus rate of increase. This is a favourite trap. Actual increase is just the difference between the two years. Rate of increase divides that difference by the base year value.

$$\text{Rate of increase} = \dfrac{\text{Value in 2019–20} - \text{Value in 1950–51}}{\text{Value in 1950–51}} \times 100$$

Worked example: whose rise is bigger? Forests rose from 17 to 23.4, an actual increase of 6.4 percentage points. Non agricultural use rose from 3.2 to 9.1, an actual increase of 5.9. So forests gained more in absolute terms. But the rates tell a different story.

Non agricultural use starts from a small base, so even a modest gain is a huge rate. That is why it has the highest rate of increase, while forests have the largest actual increase. The common wrong step is to compare the raw differences and name forests.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: the forest share in land records rose because the demarcated forest area rose, not because actual forest cover rose. In reality: actual tree cover is a separate measurement. The Forest Survey of India assesses forest cover from satellite images, which is why a land record figure and a forest cover figure are never the same number. Why it matters: a question that says "increase in forest cover" is a trap if the source is land records.

Common property resources

Land is either private (owned by an individual or a group of individuals) or a common property resource (CPR), owned by the state for use by the community. A CPR is a community's natural resource to which every member has the right of access and use, with specified obligations, and which nobody owns as private property. Community forests, pasture lands, village water bodies and other public spaces are examples.

Why CPRs matter more to some people. The landless and marginal farmers depend on income from livestock because they have limited access to land, and livestock depends on common grazing land. Women are affected most, because fodder and fuel collection is mostly done by them. When a CPR degrades, they spend long hours walking to find fuel and fodder.

Why land matters more in farming

Land is a purely land based input in agriculture, unlike in the secondary and tertiary sectors. It contributes more to farm output than to output elsewhere, so lack of access to land correlates with rural poverty. Land quality directly affects farm productivity, which is not true for other activities. And in villages, land ownership is also social security: it is collateral for credit and a cushion against natural hazards and life emergencies, and it adds to social status.

How much land is left to farm?

Total cultivable land is net area sown plus all fallow lands plus culturable wasteland.

The stock of cultivable land has declined marginally, from 59.5 to 57.7 per cent of reporting area. Within it, the share of net area sown has grown, so reserve land has shrunk. The lesson is blunt: the scope for adding new land to net area sown is limited, so India needs land saving technologies.

Land saving technologies are of two kinds: those that raise the yield of a crop per unit of land, and those that raise total output from one unit of land over a year by increasing land use intensity. The second kind has a bonus. It also raises demand for labour, which suits a land scarce but labour abundant country like India, because a high cropping intensity makes fuller use of land and also reduces rural unemployment.

$$\text{Cropping intensity (\%)} = \dfrac{\text{Gross cropped area}}{\text{Net sown area}} \times 100$$

Worked example: a hypothetical farm. A farm has 4 ha of net sown area. It grows rice in kharif and wheat in rabi on all 4 ha, and a vegetable crop in zaid on 1 ha. Gross cropped area is $4 + 4 + 1 = 9$ ha, so cropping intensity is $\dfrac{9}{4} \times 100 = 225\%$. The common wrong step is dividing by the area of land left fallow or by total farm area. The denominator is always net sown area, because net sown area counts each plot once.

Cropping seasons

Northern and interior India has three distinct crop seasons. Kharif coincides with the south west monsoon and suits tropical crops. Rabi begins with the onset of winter, and its cool conditions suit temperate and subtropical crops. Zaid is a short summer season after the rabi harvest, and its crops need irrigation.

Why the south does not follow the three season pattern. Temperatures there are high enough to grow tropical crops in any month, as long as soil moisture is available. So the same crop can be grown up to three times in one agricultural year.

Types of farming

By main source of moisture, farming is irrigated or rainfed (barani). Irrigation differs by purpose.

Rainfed farming splits on soil moisture adequacy.

Foodgrains

Foodgrains occupy about two thirds of the total cropped area and dominate in every part of the country, whether farming is for subsistence or for sale. By grain structure they are cereals and pulses. Cereals take about 54 per cent of cropped area. India produces about 11 per cent of the world's cereals and ranks third after China and the U.S.A. Cereals are fine grains (rice, wheat) or coarse grains (jowar, bajra, maize, ragi).

Coarse cereals together occupy about 16.50 per cent of cropped area.

Rice: three crops in West Bengal. Farmers there grow aus, aman and boro. In the Himalayas and the north west, rice is a single kharif crop. India contributes 22.07 per cent of world rice and ranks second after China (2018).

Why rice yields are high in Punjab and Haryana. Punjab and Haryana are not traditional rice areas. Rice came to their irrigated lands in the 1970s with the Green Revolution. Improved seed varieties, relatively high use of fertilisers and pesticides, and a dry climate that makes the crop less prone to pests explain the higher yield.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: rice is a tropical humid crop whose high yields in Punjab and Haryana come from technology and irrigation. In reality: rice is one of the most water hungry crops, and in Punjab and Haryana it is grown by drawing heavily on groundwater, which is why these two states reappear in the groundwater depletion story in Water Resources. Why it matters: the same fact can appear as an agriculture question and as a water question.

Wheat. It is the second most important cereal, India makes about 12.8 per cent of world wheat (2017), and about 85 per cent of the area under it lies in the Indo Gangetic Plain, Malwa Plateau and the Himalayas up to 2,700 m.

Gram displaced. After the Green Revolution wheat displaced gram from the cropping pattern in Haryana, Punjab and northern Rajasthan. Gram now covers only about 2.8 per cent of cropped area.

Pause and predict: the Green Revolution raised wheat output in Punjab. What do you expect it did to the area under pulses there, and why?

Check your answer: it reduced it. Farmers moved to the more profitable irrigated wheat, which is why gram was displaced. Leguminous crops also disappeared from the irrigated rotation, which is part of the land degradation story later in this chapter.

Pulses and oilseeds

Pulses are rich in proteins and are legumes, so they fix nitrogen and raise soil fertility. They take about 11 per cent of cropped area and are concentrated in the drylands of the Deccan and central plateaus and the north west. Because they are rainfed, yields are low and fluctuate from year to year. India is a leading producer.

Oilseeds are grown for edible oil and take about 14 per cent of cropped area. Their regions are the drylands of the Malwa plateau, Marathwada, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Telangana, the Rayalseema region of Andhra Pradesh and the Karnataka plateau.

Fibre crops

Yields of cotton are high under irrigation in the north west and very low in rainfed Maharashtra. India lost large parts of both cotton and jute growing areas to Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) at partition.

Sugarcane, tea and coffee

Tea plantations in India began in the 1840s in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam. Tea is an indigenous crop of the hills of northern China, rich in caffeine and tannin, and India's share in the international market has declined substantially. India mostly grows arabica, a superior coffee that is in great demand internationally.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: black tea leaves are fermented and green tea leaves are not. In reality: both come from the same tea plant. The difference lies in how the leaf is processed after plucking. Why it matters: "which plant gives green tea" is a trick question, because there is only one plant.

Agricultural development: a timeline

Why irrigation was the pre requisite. HYVs need an assured, regular supply of soil moisture, so the strategy worked first in irrigated areas. It made India self reliant in foodgrains and encouraged agro input and agro processing industries, but it also left rainfed regions behind until the 1970s.

Two views. For the exam: the Green Revolution made the country self reliant in foodgrain production. Another reading: scholars point out that it was initially confined to irrigated areas, which widened regional disparities, and that later pressures on land such as salinisation, waterlogging and heavy chemical use are linked to the same irrigation led strategy. Why it matters: the same chapter gives you both the success and the cost, and a statement based question may test either.

Output and technology in the last fifty years. Production and yield of rice and wheat have risen at an impressive rate, and sugarcane, oilseeds and cotton have also risen appreciably. Irrigation has been the foundation for HYVs, chemical fertilisers, pesticides and farm machinery. Use of chemical fertilisers has risen about 15 times since the mid 1960s, and pesticide use has also risen, because HYVs are highly susceptible to pests and diseases.

Schemes mentioned. The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) aims to make agriculture more productive, sustainable, remunerative and climate resilient through location specific integrated farming and soil and moisture conservation. The Government promotes organic farming through the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) and the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY).

Problems of Indian agriculture

Most problems are region specific, but several are common.

Pause and predict: why does multiple cropping reduce soil fertility even though it raises output?

Check your answer: it shortens or removes the fallow period, so the soil gets no time to recover through natural processes such as nitrogen fixation. Together with the loss of legumes from the rotation, fertility drops unless chemicals replace it.

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: Human Settlements shows how rural and urban settlements spread, the same expansion that raises the non agricultural share of land.
• Next: Water Resources picks up irrigation, groundwater depletion and the states where rice and wheat are grown.
• Related: Primary Activities places Indian farming in the world picture of subsistence and commercial agriculture, and Climate explains the monsoon behind kharif and rabi.