Question

write a detailed account in 350 words on the challenges for the agriculture sector in India

Answer 1

Agriculture has a significant role in the socio-economic fabric of India. Here Sikh farmers are deploying a tractor and cane crusher to produce and distribute free cane juice at a festival.

Several festivals relate to agriculture in India. Holi — the festival of colours — is celebrated across north India as the coming of spring. It is celebrated with bonfires, meeting friends and strangers, playful painting each other with colours.

Farms in rural India. Most farms in India are small plots such as in this image.

A vegetable farm in Himachal Pradesh state.
The history of Agriculture in India dates back to Indus Valley Civilization Era and even before that in some parts of Southern India.[1] Today, India ranks second worldwide in farm output. Agriculture and allied sectors like forestry and fisheries accounted for 13.7% of the GDP (gross domestic product) in 2013,[2] about 50% of the workforce.[3][4] The economic contribution of agriculture to India's GDP is steadily declining with the country's broad-based economic growth. Still, agriculture is demographically the broadest economic sector and plays a significant role in the overall socio-economic fabric of India.

India exported $39 billion worth of agricultural products in 2013, making it the seventh largest agricultural exporter worldwide and the sixth largest net exporter.[5] Most of its agriculture exports serve developing and least developed nations.[5] Indian agricultural/horticultural and processed foods are exported to more than 100 countries, primarily in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, SAARC countries, the EU and the United states
As per the 2010 FAO world agriculture statistics, India is the world's largest producer of many fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, major spices, select fibrous crops such as jute, staples such as millets and castor oil seed. India is the second largest producer of wheat and rice, the world's major food staples.[7]

India is the world's second or third largest producer of several dry fruits, agriculture-based textile raw materials, roots and tuber crops, pulses, farmed fish, eggs, coconut, sugarcane and numerous vegetables. India ranked in the world's five largest producers of over 80% of agricultural produce items, including many cash crops such as coffee and cotton, in 2010.[7] India is one of the world's five largest producers of livestock and poultry meat, with one of the fastest growth rates, as of 2011.[8]

One report from 2008 claimed India's population is growing faster than its ability to produce rice and wheat.[9] Other recent studies claim India can easily feed its growing population, plus produce wheat and rice for global exports, if it can reduce food staple spoilage, improve its infrastructure and raise its farm productivity to those achieved by other developing countries such as Brazil and China.[10][11]

In fiscal year ending June 2011, with a normal monsoon season, Indian agriculture accomplished an all-time record production of 85.9 million tonnes of wheat, a 6.4% increase from a year earlier. Rice output in India hit a new record at 95.3 million tonnes, a 7% increase from the year earlier.[12] Lentils and many other food staples production also increased year over year. Indian farmers, thus produced about 71 kilograms of wheat and 80 kilograms of rice for every member of Indian population in 2011. The per capita supply of rice every year in India is now higher than the per capita consumption of rice every year in Japan.[13]

India exported $39 billion worth of agricultural products in 2013, making it the seventh largest agricultural exporter worldwide, and the sixth largest net exporter.[5] This represents explosive growth, as in 2003 net export were about $5 billion.[5] India is the fastest growing exporter of agricultural products over a 10-year period, its $39 billion of net exports is more than double the combined exports of the European Union (EU-28).[5] It has become one of the world's largest supplier of rice, cotton, sugar and wheat. India exported around 2 million metric tonnes of wheat and 2.1 million metric tonnes of rice in 2011 to Africa, Nepal, Bangladesh and other regions around the world.[12]