write the ways to increase the gross sown are
Answers
There are only two ways to satisfy the increasing food and other demands of the country’s rising population—either expanding the net area under cultivation or intensifying cropping over the existing area.
The net sown area of the country has risen by about 20 per cent since independence and has reached a point where it is not possible to make any appreciable increase. Thus, raising the cropping intensity is the only viable option left.
Cropping intensity refers to raising of a number of crops from the same field during one agricultural year; it can be expressed through a formulas.
Cropping Intensity = Gross Cropped Area / Net Sown Area x 100
Thus, higher cropping intensity means that a higher proportion of the net sown area is being cropped more than once during one agricultural year. This also implies higher productivity per unit of arable land during one agricultural year.
For instance, suppose a farmer owns 5 hectares of land, and gets the crop from these five acres during the kharif season and, again, during the rabi season he raises a crop from 3 hectares. He gets the effective produce from 8 hectares, although he owns only 5 hectares physically. Had he raised crops from 5 hectares totally, his cropping intensity would have been 100 per cent or 100, while now it is 160 per cent or 160.
The cropping intensity shows great spatial variation in India, with higher levels in northern plains. Lower levels are found in dry, rain-fed regions of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Measures to Raise Cropping Intensity:
Various measures to raise cropping intensity are discussed below:
1. Irrigation:
Irrigation has played an important role in raising the cropping intensity in northern states where it has risen considerably. Irrigation helps raise the cropping intensity by enabling raising, of crops during the dry season also.
2. Fertilisers:
The need to leave the land fallow for some period to regain the lost nutrients can be dispensed with by using fertilisers and following some other suitable cropping practices.
3. Crop Rotation:
It is the suitable arrangement of successive crops in such a way that the different crops draw nutrients in different proportions or from different strata. For instance, if legumes (pulses, gram, etc.) or certain oilseeds are sown just before the cereals, they fix the atmospheric nitrogen in soil, which can be absorbed by the cereals.
4. Mixed Cropping:
This works on similar principles. In this case, wheat and barley or wheat and gram or barley and gram are grown together to maintain a balance of consumption between different nutrients.
5. Relay Cropping:
This means simultaneous sowing of different crops with different nurturing periods in the same field and harvesting them one after the other. For instance, highly fertiliser-intensive crops like sugarcane and tobacco can be followed by cereals, in order to utilise the residual nutrients.
6. Selective Mechanisation:
Use of tractors, tillers, threshers, etc. can save critical time between raising two crops, thus enabling the sowing of more than one crop.
7. Use of Fast Maturing Varieties:
These varieties can enable growing of more than one -crop within one growing season.
8. Appropriate Plant:
Protection These measures include the use of pesticides and insecticides, seed treatment, weed control, rodent control measures, etc. These measures are effective when all the farmers in an area take these up collectively.
Therefore, these measures should be promoted on an institutional basis. Also, substantial improvement in yield can be attained through soil improvement measures, such as land leveling, sloping, contour bunding, terracing, removal of salinity and alkalinity, etc.
Agricultural intensity could also take into account animal husbandry and fishery supplementing or complementing the crops grown.