8.14 ndian onom
Cropping systems of a region are decided, involved in cultivating larger area under
by and large, by a number of soil and climatic a particular crop.
parameters, which determine the overall (ii) Due to prevailing socio-economic
agro-ecological setting for nourishment and situations, such as, dependency of large
appropriateness of a crop or set of crops for population on agriculture, small land-
cultivation. Nevertheless, at farmers’ level, holding size, very high population
potential productivity and monetary benefits act pressure on land resource, etc.
as guiding principles, while opting for a particular Improving household food security has
crop or a cropping system. These decisions with been an issue of supreme importance to many
respect to choice of crops and cropping systems are million farmers of India, with the following farm
further narrowed down under influence of several holdings—
other forces related to infrastructure facilities,
(a) 56.15 million marginal (<1.0 ha),
socio-economic and technological factors, all
operating interactively at the micro-level. These (b) 17.92 million small (1.0–2.0 ha), and
factors are: (c) 13.25 million semi-medium (2.0–4.0
(i) Goegraphical factors: Soil, landforms, ha).
precipitation, moisture, altitude, etc. They together are 90 per cent of the 97.15
(ii) Socio-cultural factors: Food habits, million operational holdings. An important
festivals, tradition, etc. consequence of this has been that crop production
in India remained to be considered, by and large, a
(iii) Infrastructure factors: Irrigation,
subsistence rather than commercial activity. One of
transport, storage, trade and marketing,
the typical characteristics of subsistence farming is
post-harvest handling and processing,
that most of the farmers resort to grow a number
etc.
of crops on their farm holdings, primarily to fulfil
(iv) Economic factors: Financial resource their household needs and follow the practice
base, land ownership, size and type of of rotating a particular crop combination over a
land holding, household needs of food, period of 3–4 year, interchangeably on different
fodder, fuel, fibre and finance, labour farm fields.
availability, etc.
Under the influence of all the above factors,
(v) Technological factors: Improved varieties te cropping systems remain dynamic in time and
of seeds and plants, mechanisation, plant space, making it difficult to precisely determine
protection, access to information, etc. their spread using conventional methods,
over a large territory. However, it has been
PrevAlent croPPing systems estimated that more than 250 double cropping
Multiplicity of cropping systems has been one of systems are followed throughout the country.
the main features of Indian agriculture. This may Based on the rationale of spread of crops in
be attributed to the following two major factors: each district in the country, 30 important
(i) Rainfed agriculture still accounts for cropping systems have been identified—
over 92.8 million hectare or 65 per cent rice-wheat, rice-rice, rice-gram, rice-mustard, rice-
of the cropped area. A large diversity of groundnut, rice-sorghum, pearlmillet-gram, pearl
cropping systems exists under rainfed and millet-mustard, pearl millet-sorghum, cotton-
dryland areas with an over-riding practice wheat, cotton-gram, cotton-sorghum, cotton-
of intercropping, due to greater risks safflower, cotton-groundnut, maize-wheat,