Evolution of Indian agriculture

India is the second largest producer of wheat and rice, which are the most widely used staple food. India also plays a major role in producing dry fruits, raw materials for textile industries, roots, tuber crops, pulses, coconut, sugarcane and various other vegetables. Agriculture plays a vital role in Indian economy. According to the sources, Indian agriculture began by 9000 BCE on north west India. Indians considered agriculture as their major survival and they even worshiped it and we still do.

Rise and Fall of agriculture

Farmers used to cultivate their lands with completely natural seeds and fertilize them using bio fertilizers, that is manually prepared fertilizers which consists of cow dung, dry leaves, vegetable and fruit waste and farmers even used earthworms to decompose the organic matter. Earthworms have the ability to eat and mix large amount of soil and organic matter and deposit it in the form of casts. The crops that are obtained as a result of natural organic forming were healthy but the yield was less. In order to increase the yield, nowadays lot of chemical fertilizers, pesticides are used, which increases the yield but the quality of the crop is a question mark. Over the years, the dependency on agriculture has declined to 50 percent as per the latest round of the periodic labor force survey for 2018-19, also the lockdown has severely disrupted India’s agriculture.