Indian agriculture: cropping patterns, Green Revolution & irrigation
Cropping seasons, the Green Revolution and its geography, irrigation systems and the agrarian crisis—mapped for UPSC Prelims and Mains GS-1.
The Three Cropping Seasons
Indian agriculture is structured around three crop seasons keyed to the monsoon calendar. Kharif crops are sown with the southwest monsoon (June–July) and harvested September–October: rice, jowar, bajra, maize, cotton, groundnut, jute, tur (arhar). Rabi crops are winter-sown (October–December) and spring-harvested (March–April), depending on retreating-monsoon moisture and western disturbances over the northwest: wheat, barley, gram, mustard, peas. Zaid is the short summer season (March–June) for watermelon, muskmelon, cucumber and fodder, dependent on irrigation.
Geographic Distribution of Major Crops
Rice dominates where rainfall exceeds 100–200 cm or assured irrigation exists: West Bengal (largest producer), Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, the deltaic east coast and Assam. It needs 25°C+ temperatures and standing water. Wheat is a rabi crop of the northwestern plains—Uttar Pradesh (largest), Punjab and Haryana—requiring cool growing weather and 50–75 cm rainfall with bright harvest-time sunshine.
Millets (jowar, bajra, ragi) are dryland crops of the Deccan and Rajasthan, rebranded 'Shree Anna'/nutri-cereals after the UN declared 2023 the International Year of Millets. Cotton grows on the black regur soils of the Deccan lava plateau—Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana. Sugarcane concentrates in Uttar Pradesh and the irrigated Maharashtra–Karnataka belt. Tea requires well-drained slopes and 150–300 cm rain (Assam, Darjeeling, the Nilgiris); coffee clusters on the Karnataka–Kerala–Tamil Nadu hill tracts.
Cropping Intensity and Patterns
Cropping intensity is the ratio of gross cropped area to net sown area; assured irrigation raises it above 150% in Punjab and Haryana. The Indo-Gangetic plain is dominated by the rice–wheat cropping system, the productive but ecologically stressed engine of national food security. The Standing Committee on Agriculture and the NITI Aayog have repeatedly flagged that monocropping rice and wheat depletes groundwater, fixes nutrient imbalance and traps farmers in the Minimum Support Price (MSP) procurement cycle, which historically favoured only these two cereals plus a few others.
India operates a dual classification of land use derived from the Land Revenue records: net sown area (~140 million hectares), forest, fallow (current and other), and culturable waste. Crop diversification toward pulses, oilseeds and horticulture is the stated policy goal, since India remains the world's largest pulse producer yet still imports to meet demand. The National Food Security Mission (2007) and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (2007) target precisely these structural gaps. For the exam, you must be able to pair each crop with its temperature, rainfall and soil requirement and its leading producer state—the single highest-frequency fact cluster in Prelims agriculture questions.