Question

short note on food crops and non food crops

Answer 1

Due to its large population Indian agricultural is largely dominated by the predominance of the food crops which occupy 64.9 Der cent of the total cropped area of the country, (1999-00) these crops are bound to have priority in years to come despite the emerging trends of commercialisation and diver­sification in the country's agriculture.

Even the increasing share of non-food crops in the gross cropped area (from 23.3% in 1950-51 to 35.1% in 1999-00) has been made possible due to phenomenal increase in the output of food grains under Green Revolution.

There has been about four times (299%) increase in the production of food grains between 1950-51 and 1998-99. These crops are raised all over the country and throughout the year. In Assam, West Bengal and coastal regions of the Peninsula as many as three successive crops of rice are grown in a year. In irrigated areas of Punjab and Haryana the field is hardly vacant and wheat, gram, rice, bajra, and maize are the main crops.

Food crops have attracted highest attention of our planners, policy makers, administrators and ag­ricultural scientists.

It is in these crops, particularly in wheat, maize, bajra, jowar, and rice high yielding varieties have been developed and Green Revolu­tion has set in. Whenever the production of these crops is adversely affected due to the vagaries of the weather famine and drought conditions develop which often lead to the political turmoil and instability.

In recent years efforts are being made to popularise dry farming and introduce Green Revolution technol­ogy to augment the production of coarse grains and pulses so as to improve the availability of food grains and nutrition level of the weaker section of the Indian society.

Food crops include cereals and pulses amongst which rice, wheat, jowar, bajra, maize, barley, ragi (as cereals), gram and tur (as pulses) are important.

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