Agriculture
Agriculture is very important one for it gives us food to eat, cotton for clothes, raw materials like jute and sugar cane for our industries and fodder for our animals. For thousands of years people all over the world and of our country have relied on agriculture as their major occupation.
About seventy percent of the Indian people make their living from the land. India possesses very large areas of flat and fertile land which are very good for cultivation. Forty percent of the total area of the country is used for growing various kinds of crops like rice, wheat, mullets, cotton, jute, sugarcane tea etc.
Most of the people in this country prefer to eat the kinds of food grains which grow in their own region.
But we are not yet producing enough for all the people of the country. We, a nation of farmers have to get a large amount of food from other countries every year. We are growing fast and now there are about Sixty-four crores of people living in India. So every year we need more and more food while our production remains the same. So we must grow more and more food year after year.
To grow more and more crop, the farmer must use better seeds, more fertilizers, irrigation facilities and must practice better and modern methods of cultivation. Through five year plans our government is trying to educate our farmers. They are told and trained to replace their old fashioned cultivation methods by more modern and scientific methods of cultivation.
Tractors dig deeper and plough more land in less lime. Use of good seeds obtained from the special seed farms helps to get better yield.
Use of manure and chemical fertilizers helps the soil to restore fertility as land loses some fertility after every crop.
Canals, wells, tanks and tube wells help to irrigate our fields during the dry season.
Spray of insecticides saves the plants from various diseases. Even helicopters are used for spraying insecticides on a large area of fields of different crops.
Many irrigation projects has been built to provide water for more fields. Loan schemes initiated by the Government and banks help the farmers to get loans for buying good seeds, machinery, sinking wells etc.
Through Marketing Corporation the farm products are made to sell for the optimum price and profit to the farmers. Thus we have made considerable progress and we are the first in the production of groundnuts and second largest producer of rice, jute, sugarcane and oil seeds.
