Agriculture in the next century - Africa

chapter for agriculture in this blog we will learn about agriculture and how it is important to our country agriculture is the largest livelihood provider in India the history of agriculture in India dates back to the Vedic period that is 1500 to 500 BCE so this was the time when the Indo iron settled into the northern India near Indus Valley and the culture was sometimes referred to as vedic civilization agriculture was first shaped in the Indian subcontinent during this era now fast-forward today two-thirds of a population is engaged in agricultural activities there's a saying in economics I don't know who said this but it goes something like this a healthy nation is a prosperous nation and to be healthy agriculture produces most of the food that we consume apart from producing food for the nation agriculture produces raw material for various multi-million dollar industries like tea coffee spices etc just think about it supporting so much of employment and not to forget many of these items are exported and that brings in a lot of foreign exchange just imagine how much agriculture is important now that we have a beef context regarding the importance of Agriculture let's move ahead and get to know more in depth here is a summary of the content in this video through seconds back we learned the importance of Agriculture and how a national economy is dependent on it let's move on to the second topic types of farming agriculture is not something new it's been carried out from ages hence there will be significant changes in the way it is carried out I'm talking about its procedures techniques practices etc over the time a lot of things change --is like the physical environment let's take an example of the weather weather is not the same today what it used to be thousands of years back similarly today there is a massive technological boost in the agricultural sector in order to use them efficiently you have to be aware of its technical know-how for example today we have high yielding seeds to grow crops quickly these seeds produces more with less input they do not require much water they do not require much time these innovation are possible due to genetic engineering and one need to acquire the knowledge in order to make efficient use of this technology so based on such diversity there are three types of farming and they are one primitive subsistence farming to intensive subsistence farming and the last one is commercial farming let's get to know each one of them in brief the first one is primitive subsistence farming now the meaning of the term primitive is having characteristics of an early stage so the primary tools that were used for agriculture were who doubt digging stakes and family community laborers because today we have large machineries but there are many parts in India where this kind of farming is still continued where things are at its early stage so most commonly this type of farming is dependent on monsoon because that is the cheapest and the best way of getting water so you cannot think about having a private channel from a reservoir for irrigation and the second important thing is need to have a natural fertility of the soil again you cannot afford to have fertilizers of or high yielding seeds no advanced methods only traditional methods so natural fertility of the soil is important and then you need suitability of the environment which means the mother nature should be happy again you cannot have access to private rooms or freezers or some sort of a place where you can control the temperature so in simple terms we can also say primitive subsistence farming is also known as traditional farming where there is no use of modern technology or method everything is of early stage so slash-and-burn agriculture is one of the type of primitive subsistence farming remember that there is another word to it it's called jump cultivation it's mainly practiced by the tribal people of the northeastern region so what they do is they clear the land they cut down all the natural vegetation they make it a flat plane land they grow their food crops and once they have done with the growing part naturally the soil fertility will decrease the what they do is they burn the natural vegetation so that all the born ashes of the vegetation will again make the soil fertile and in the meantime they move on to the next piece of land this decreases the land productivity and this type of Agriculture is not recommended so I hope you get the meaning of primitive subsistence farming let's move on to the second one intensive subsistence farming so the meaning of the word intensive means intense serious or full-fledged so in this type of farming you make use of all kinds of facility that is available that is intensive labor then high doses of biochemical inputs and the focus is always towards the higher production however there is one problem with this kind of farming there's always enormous pressure on the agricultural land because a farmer would have limited piece of land and due to family economical or financial pressure he has to continue to grow more and more crops so that he can have maximum output from that limited piece of land so just remember the word intense you will get the meaning of this type of forming and the last type of farming is commercial farming so the meaning of the word commercial is something that is associated with business so when a particular crop is associated with business I mean if you earn some sort of a huge profit by growing a particular crop then you will use all kinds of technology you will put an ample of hardwork time effort money labor everything and the reason is simple the output is going to be profitable so this is the meaning of commercial farming so the kind of inputs that we put in this kind of farming are you will use high yielding varieties seeds so these are genetically produce seeds so this kind of seeds produces more with less input then again you will use chemical fertilizers insecticides and pesticides for higher productivity now rice is a very common as well as important commercial crop because you and I vie to eat rice at least once in our day so you do realize the demand of this crop so where there is huge 2-month there has to be supply and supply is usually profitable and that is the meaning of commercial farming just remember that now let's move on to the next topic cropping pattern India has a rich physical diversity meaning physical effect divisions such as the mountains plateaux deserts islands all of this are so diverse landforms and together they all exist in the Indian subcontinent and then we have plurality of cultures that is so many communities with different religion linguistic cultural tribal values exist together not with all of this going on you can see the reflection of diversity in the way crops are grown and this is what is referred to as cropping pattern in India you can find fiber crops cereal vegetables fruits and spices all of this are grown but in a different season and they have been nicely divided into three types they are Rabi Karif and Zedd so let's read about each one of them in brief the first one is Robbie crop so this crop is soared in the season of winter that is from October to December and harvested in summer that is from April to June so always remember Robbie crop is a winter crop the best way to remember is the letter I also exists in the word winter so when you have Robbie it's winter remember that now some of the important Rabi crops are wheat barley piece gram now these crops are grown in the large part of India especially places near north and northwest in parts such as Punjab Haryana Himachal Pradesh Jammu and Kashmir with tarantula andother Pradesh so remember India has two types of monsoon that is southwestern monsoon and then not eastern monsoon so the second one that is the not eastern monsoon it occurs during the winter season therefore this monsoon or this rainfall helps in the success of these crops now due to the success of Green Revolution it has helped in the growth of these Rabi crops so Green Revolution was a period when agriculture in India increased its yields due to improved agronomic technology you know at that time everything was efficiently done we have proper technology in place and with best practices this movement green revolution developed and this was purely to overcome food defects because that can lead to health hazards now let's read about the kharif crop kharif crops are grown with the onset of monsoon so this is the southwestern monsoon we are talking about which starts at the beginning of June and the crops are harvested in the month of September or October by the end of the monsoon so car if crop is sown in the monsoon and Robbie crop is sown in the winter remember that now some of the car if crops are paddy maize jor bara tor MooMoo Roth cotton jute ground nut and soya bean so all of these crops are grown at the region of Assam West Bengal coastal regions of Orissa under Pradesh Tamil Nadu Kerala and Maharashtra so you see all of these places receives rainfall from the southwest and wind so this was all about the car if crop so after Robbie and kharif season there's something called Zee season so it is a short season but it is mostly in the summer so some of the crops that are grown in this season are watermelon musk melon koo kumba and other vegetables and father's so all of these crops falls on the Zayat crop so with this we are now aware of the three types of cropping patterns in India now let's read about the major crops of India I have made a separate video dedicated to this entire topic I want you to watch that video and you will have a nice understanding about all the major crops that are grown in India link to the video is in the description you can also click on the info card available on your top right corner of this video let's move on to the next topic technological and institutional reforms now the meaning of the words technological and institutional reforms means that there has to be a Reformation or change in the technology the way we use and in the institutional formation or function because if we bring a positive change in both the sectors that is the technology as well as the institution it will only contribute towards smooth functioning of the work flow and efficiency will be at its prime agriculture is the bloodline of a country I mean without food no one can survive therefore to develop this sector there has to be a compatibility with the acknowledged and the institutional changes because if you're performing agriculture on your land without the help of technology or any institutional help then it is not sustainable meaning it will not last for a very long time you will be exhausted tired and your productivity will be low there are so many farmers in this country who still depends upon the monsoon and the natural fertility of the soil I mean it isn't wrong but the productivity would be so less I mean as a farmer you need to make use of the irrigational facilities and then you have to use fertilizers for for growing the natural fertility of your soil you also need to use high yielding variety of seeds that take less input and gives a larger output because if you don't make use of all these new reforms then it is going to be a serious challenge to the rising population because what happens when supply doesn't meet the demand there will be all sorts of crisis and no country wants that therefore the agricultural sector needs some serious technical and institutional reforms so if you look at the first five-year plan of our India or for those of you who don't know what is fire your plan it is a government plan for economic development so what they do is they decide and write it down all the things that they want to do for the next five years since independence we have had twelve five-year plan anyways so if you look at the document you will find that there is a mentioning of institutional reforms and technological reforms for the agricultural sector so what does it mean it means that even the government is strong about adopting these measures so that they can improve the agricultural sector so if you look at the first fire plan which was drafted in the year of 1951 to 56 in that it is mentioned about abolishing of Zamindari system and that is a major step towards land Reformation in case you want to read more about it I have a link in the description to the first fire plan in fact you can read up all the fire plans so some of the strategies that that has been taken by the Government of India in improving the Indian agricultural sector is Green Revolution and white revolution so these revolutions in you'd both institutional and technical reforms so some of the reforms were provision for crop insurance against Roth so just like you have an insurance for your car here you have an insurance for your crop then you have the establishment of Grameen banks cooperative societies and banks for providing loan facilities to the farmer so every bank has a priority sector lending scheme so it is an important role given by the Reserve Bank of India so what happens in this scheme is the bank has to keep aside certain amount of money that can only be given to the agricultural sector or allied activities as loan so this money cannot be given for any other purposes this is only meant for agricultural activities so these are some of the schemes introduced by the government of India for the benefit of the farmers and the next topic is contribution of agriculture to the national economy now we know that agriculture has been the backbone of the country therefore naturally its contribution to the GDP would be statistically visible but this contribution is declining year by year so any sort of decline or stagnation is bad for the nation and will have serious implications on the society government is dedicated towards the development of this sector by joining hands with Indian Council of agricultural research many agricultural universities many veterinary services and numerous animal breeding centers so all sorts of R&D is being carried out by the government now another challenge that our country faces today is that our GDP is increasing but the employment opportunity is not I'll just give you an brief illustration as to what I just said so GDP is nothing but the value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country now I want you to imagine two countries having GDP of 100 so country a has 100 and country B has 100 and also assume their population is the same that is 10 people so in country a 10 people are earning 10 rupees in order to generate a GDP of 100 fair enough now in country B 5 people are earning 20 rupees each in order to generate a GDP of 100 and rest 5 people are unemployed so you see increase in GDP does not mean the country is doing well in terms of M now with the similar principle we can also think of it this way though the GDP must be increasing for the country year by year but then the growth rate of agriculture is decelerating so the three most important sectors agriculture industries and services so these three sector broadly determines the kind of job that we are in so currently India's GDP is 7.3 now it's really good it's high but if you look at inside the services sector is high followed by industries and then last is agriculture and Moomins back we just read that agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy if that is low what good is it going to do to the country I hope you get what I'm trying to say and because of the increase in the services sector a lot of things are being outsourced from developed nations to our country including jobs products services etc and because of that Indian farmers are facing a big challenge from the international competition and then on the other hand government is also not increasing the funding in the agricultural sector and because of all of this farmers are redrawing their investment from agriculture there are a lot of people who were farmers once upon a time they have left the agricultural sector and I move towards the services sector for employment just imagine if the entire population moves from one sector to another it is going to be catastrophic though it may promise you comfort job security and benefits but we need sufficient amount of people at different sectors so that no sector is empty especially we can not afford to empty the agricultural sector it needs to be properly fed with investment so this was the contribution of agriculture to the national economy and the next topic we are going to read about is food security so the meaning of the term food security is having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable nutritious food usually the countries with higher incidence of poverty do not have food security because there are many geographical political as well as economical reasons apart from all of this there are places which are prone to natural disasters and they are so remote that it's very difficult to supply food over there even such kind of places exist in today's world so in order to deal with this problem the government has designed something called national food security system and it has two components one is above a stock and another one is public distribution system so the meaning of buffer stock is keeping a large quantity of food in a storage or a warehouse and then public distribution system is nothing but the ration shop through which that stored food is supplied at a very lower price to the people who are below the poverty line but then to maintain such a huge stock of food the government has to first buy those food from the farmers and for that government has fixed a support price wherein they will buy that grain in that particular price and then they will keep it in food Corporation of India now this is a national cause of course the prices at which the government will buy from the farmer is going to be less but then the government is going to complement the farmers by giving subsidies in providing seeds fertilizers and all those sort of things to grow nice crops so this is like balancing the equation you are not benefiting at the cost of someone else's loss and then these foods are then taken from food Corporation of India to the public distribution systems that is the ration shops and distribute it among the people but as a great saying goes everything has a problem and here the problem is the government procures large quantity of rice wheat and paddy from the farmers because these are the staple food for the Indian population and these are being consumed at a large scale so mostly the government buys all of these crops and stock them now having said that the farmers are even smarter they have also developed interest in growing only these kind of crops because there's not going to be lost for the farmers it's likely going to be taken by the government so they will not have a loss in it now due to this there is a distorted cropping pattern and another problem comes from the administrative point of view we know that consumers or the population is divided into two categories that is above the poverty line and below the poverty line and based on this the government provides this stocked food through PDS 2d below poverty line people but the categorization is not perfect and the number of deserving poor people are not being benefited by these schemes so even this problem needs to be addressed so again all of this problem can be only dealt if the government increases the investment in agricultural sector because the moment you create necessary infrastructure like irrigation facilities availability of electricity then it automatically attracts the private parties then the private party is going to invest huge capital in it so capitalism does helps only if it is properly administered and monitored now apart from all of this there are reasons like scarcity of water then degradation of soil due to the overuse of fertilizer and pesticides and declining productivity of land and then farmers shifting from the food crops to cultivation of fruits vegetable oil seeds and industrial crops because of commercialization so these are some of the problems that the government needs to address in order to improve the agricultural sector of a nation and the last topic of this chapter is impact of globalization on agriculture globalization means when an organization develops international influence or starts operating on an international scale so here we are going to read about how agriculture gained international exposure so globalization is not something new for Indian agriculture industry it's been happening since 19th century when European traders arrived they used to take Indian spices to different parts of the world and the Indian farmers were asked to grow European crops so all of this accounts for globalization the British were attracted to the cotton belts of India they exported heavy cotton raw materials to Britain and due to which Britain textile industry flourished and we have many more such examples of globalization not today India is an important producer of rice cotton rubber tea coffee jute and spices but still our agricultural products are not able to compete with the developed countries because the government of developed countries they highly subsidized agriculture in those countries as a result they are able to produce good as well as huge quantities of products in India we do not have proper infrastructure for the agricultural department the condition of small farmers have barely changed our farmers are still fighting the most basic problems of agriculture like overusing of chemicals land degradation and bio vanishing biodiversity so all these initial problems we are still engaged in that so proper thrust should be given to the improvement of the condition of small farmers so there is an old saying that success lies in small small changes therefore the Indian farmers should diversify their cropping pattern from cereals to high-value crops because this needs to be done at the most basic level though we can sit and talk about institutional and technical reforms but at the ground level farmers need to understand this logic behind diversifying the cropping pattern we have to learn the art of harnessing the diverse climate and in the process grow wide range of high-value crops so with this we have come to an end of this chapter I hope you have found this blog informative if you enjoy these blog