why rice is cultivated and used as stapel food in kashmir and not wheat
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Jammu and Kashmir is a hill state having varied topography and great diversity in cultural, social and economic practices of its different regions. However, agriculture remains the backbone of the economy of Jammu and Kashmir with over 65 percent of its population depends on agriculture and allied sectors. These sectors contribute around 27 percent to the State's income.
The diversity in physiographic features, agro-climatic variations at macro and micro level, existence of cold arid, temperate, inter-mediate and sub-tropical zones within a small geographical area of 2.22 lakh square kilometers, speaks volumes about the vast agricultural potential in the State.
Though, the large diversity in agro-climatic conditions of the State is conducive for propagation of diversified farming system, the terrain at the same time is tough and accessibility to a greater part of the region is poor. This causes a lot of hurdles to the inhabitants in provision of inputs, products and level of literacy and awareness.
Over the years, the agriculturists and farmers have adopted several area specific and time specific cultivation practices to meet the requirement of their staple food crops. Rice, maize, wheat, pulses, fodder, oil seeds, potato and barley are the main crops of the region.
The farmers are now diversifying to cash crops such as flowers, vegetables, quality seeds, aromatic and medicinal plants and mushrooms etc round the year. Honey-bee keeping, fodder intensification, production of quality saffron, basmati rice, rajmash, off-season vegetables, potatoes etc are also practiced in specific areas, belts and clusters depending upon their agro-climatic suitability.
However, still state is facing the low productivity of all agricultural crops and there is massive deficit in its own production of food grains (40 percent), oil seeds (70 percent) and vegetables (30 percent). The net sown area of 7.52 lakh hectares (2004-05) is 35 percent of the reported area as against national average of 46 percent.