Question

Clarify farming into various types and explain each of them briefly.​

Answer 1

Answer:

1. Subsistence farming:

Majority of farmers in large parts of the country, practise subsistence farming. Farmers cultivate small and scattered holdings with the help of draught animals and family members. Techniques are primitive and tools are simple. Modern farm implements are practically absent.

Farmers are too poor to purchase fertilizers and high yielding varieties of seeds as a result of which the productivity is low, Facilities like electricity, irrigation and credit are badly lacking. As such, the farmer and his family members consume the entire farm produce and do not have any surplus farm production to sell in the market. The main emphasis is on food crops although some other crops such as sugarcane, oilseeds, cotton, jute, tobacco also occupy important place in some areas.

Large scale improvement has been brought in Indian agriculture after Independence. Farming techniques were improved and the holdings became large and properly arranged as a result of consolidation. Mechanisation of agriculture increased.

2. Plantation agriculture:

Plantation agriculture was introduced in India by the Britishers in the 19th century. This type of agriculture involves growing and processing of a single cash crop purely meant for sale. Large capital input, vast estates, managerial ability, technical know-how, sophisticated farm machinery, fertilizers, good transport facilities, and a factory for processing the produce are some of the outstanding features of plantation agriculture.

There are plantations of rubber, tea, coffee, cocoa, banana, spices, coconut, etc. This type of agriculture is practised mainly in Assam, sub-Himalayan West Bengal, and in the Nilgiri, Anaimalai and Cardamom Hills in the south.

3. Shifting agriculture:

This is a type of agriculture in which a piece of forest land is cleared mainly by tribal people by felling and burning of trees and crops are grown. After 2-3 years when the fertility of the soil in the cleared land decreases, it is abandoned and the tribe shifts to some other piece of land.