Class 7 Social Science Chapter 13: The Story of Indian Farming

One of the oldest things people do

Farming is among humankind's oldest occupations, and the chapter opens by making the word much bigger than it looks.

It takes in getting the soil ready, growing the plants, and keeping livestock. In many places it takes in growing trees as part of one whole farming system.

And wider still

Some farmers raise fish, which is pisciculture. Some rear cocoons, to draw out silk thread.

Taken very broadly, the word agriculture covers four things at once: farming itself, the raising of livestock, which is animal husbandry, forestry, and horticulture.

Where the word comes from

It is Latin. Agri meant a field, and culture meant to cultivate. A field, tended.

The Government of India groups these occupations together as agriculture and allied activities. That heading reaches further than you might expect.

What counts as allied

Livestock work, of course. Then beekeeping, which is apiculture. Fisheries. The rearing of silkworms, and preparing silk yarn from them.

And fibre production, cotton and hemp among them. So a beekeeper and a silk-reeler are both in agriculture, officially.

Two numbers worth holding

In 2022 to 2023, a little over 18 per cent of everything India produced in a year, measured as its gross domestic product, came from agriculture and allied activities.

In the same period roughly 46 per cent of all who work in India earned a living from them.

Put the two together

Nearly half the workers, and a little under a fifth of the output. That gap is worth noticing early, because much of the end of this chapter is about it.

Beyond the figures, a great many Indian families are tied closely to land, and have often been cultivating the same land for generations.

Who do you picture?

Ask yourself what you see when you hear the word farmer. Most people see a man.

In rural India, as of 2025, over 75 per cent of those at work in agriculture are women. They carry out most of the operations, from sowing through harvesting to threshing, which is getting the edible grain out of the straw or husk.

A landscape, not a field

India's farming is a blend of old practices and new ones, with many crops and traditions rooted deep.

Picture four corners of it. Wheat fields in Punjab, gold at harvest. The saffron valley of Kashmir. Tea gardens in the Northeast and in the Nilgiris. Paddy fields in Kerala, bright green.

What decides any of it

Why does a crop grow here and not there? Several things settle that: the soil, the climate, how much water there is, the shape of the land.

Each of those gets a section later. But the chapter goes backwards first.

Rice, nine thousand years ago

Indian farming reaches back into prehistory. Archaeology has turned up rice grains lying in the Ganga Plain from as far back as the seventh or eighth millennium BCE.

Now read the caution that follows, because it matters. Some experts point out that finding the grains need not mean rice growing was already systematic. Mastering that may have taken a few thousand years more.

Barley at Mehrgarh

At Mehrgarh, in Baluchistan, barley and millets were being grown in the seventh millennium BCE too.

Mehrgarh matters because of what came after it: the site comes before the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilisation and leads towards it.

What the Harappans grew

Later on, the Harappans made their two staples barley and wheat.

Rice turns up at several of their sites in the third millennium BCE, in some regions at least, and so do millets and a good many vegetables.

The photograph that proves the point

At Kalibangan in Rajasthan, around 2800 BCE, two sets of furrows cross each other at right angles. That is intercropping: two or more different crops grown at the same time in one field.

The chapter prints a second photograph beside it, of the same practice still going on in the 1960s. Four thousand eight hundred years apart.

What got added over time

Farmers learned to grow oilseeds. Sesame and safflower. Linseed, mustard and castor.

They grew legumes too: green gram, black gram and fenugreek. And fibre crops, which were cotton, hemp and jute.

Fruit, and animals

The fruit list is long and familiar. Grapes and dates. Jujube and jackfruit. Mango, mulberry and black plum.

Animals were domesticated in this period as well, in the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilisation from before its cities, around 3500 BCE: cattle and asses, sheep and goats, dogs, pigs and fowl.

Three words from the Vedas

The Vedas name crops too, and three of them are worth knowing.

Yava is barley. Godhuma is wheat. Vrihi is rice. Sesame, black gram and several kinds of pulse and legume appear as well.

Written down, and tested

In the historical period, texts carry a great deal about farming. The Arthashastra of Kautilya. Then the Sangam poems of the early Tamils, the Amarakosha, and the Krishiparashara.

Then Varahamihira's Brihatsamhita, and Surapala's Vrikshayurveda, which gives advice on preparing seed, working the soil and planting. One detail settles how practical these books were: a way of grafting set out in the Brihatsamhita is still in use, joining one plant to another so that the two grow as one.

Scenario:

A museum case holds charred grains of rice, dug from a site in the Ganga Plain. The label beside them reads: proof that Indians were rice farmers nine thousand years ago. A visitor reading it says the label claims more than the grains can show. The curator disagrees, saying the dating is secure and nobody questions it. In the next case are two photographs side by side. One shows furrows crossing at right angles, excavated at Kalibangan. The other shows a field of sugarcane with pumpkins growing between the rows, taken in the 1960s. That label simply reads: four thousand eight hundred years.

Analysis:

Two labels, one of which claims too much and one of which claims almost nothing, and the quiet one is the stronger.

Activity:

Find one thing in your kitchen that appears in the chapter list of early crops.

Title:

Sort your own meals by branch

Safety:

No hazards here.

What You Notice:

Most people find three of the four branches in a single day, and forestry is the one usually missing until you notice spices, honey or timber. The exercise makes the point the chapter opens with: the word agriculture is much wider than a field of wheat.

Agri meant a field in Latin, and culture meant to cultivate.

A beekeeper and a silk-reeler both count officially as being in agriculture.

A grafting method set out in the Brihatsamhita is one that farmers still use.

Agriculture: farming, livestock, forestry, horticulture.

Yava barley, godhuma wheat, vrihi rice.

A traveller noticed it first

In the seventh century a Chinese pilgrim called Xuanzang travelled across India, and he set down something sharp about the land.

Where the climate differed and the soil differed, he wrote, what grew there differed too. The flowers, the plants, the fruit and the trees were of different kinds, and had names of their own.

Seven climates in one country

That was a shrewd observation, and a modern map bears it out. Part 1 of this textbook set out seven climate types across India.

Alpine in the Himalayas. Temperate in the lower Himalayas. Subtropical over the northern plains. Arid in the Thar Desert.

And the other three

Tropical wet along the western coastal strip. Semi-arid across the central Deccan Plateau. Tropical across eastern India and the peninsula of the south.

Each of these gets a different amount of sunshine and rain, swings differently in temperature between seasons, and is touched differently by the monsoons.

Fifteen zones, and what they are for

India is also divided into fifteen agroclimatic zones. Climate, the kinds of soil, the shape of the land and the kinds of vegetation are put together to make each category.

Three examples give the flavour: the Upper Gangetic Plain Region, the Southern Plateau and Hills Region, the Western Dry Region.

Why anyone draws those lines

The zones exist to be acted on. They help the government and other agencies work out what to grow, when to grow it and how, so that production can be improved.

So a zone is a planning tool, not a label.

Two monsoons, not one

The Indian monsoon system is the key to all this variety, because it brings the rain that most crops live on. India has two of them.

Rain comes with the southwest monsoon between June and September. That is what the kharif crops of northern and central India depend on for their growing season.

The second monsoon

The northeast monsoon runs from October to December, and it waters the east and the south of India.

Some places get both. The coastal plains do, including Malabar in Kerala and Coromandel in Tamil Nadu.

What two monsoons buy you

Here is the consequence, and it is the sort of thing that is obvious only once stated. Getting rain in two separate spells lets southern farmers grow a crop in the months between them.

For farmers in north India those same months are the dry season. They must turn elsewhere for water.

Where north India finds water

Groundwater. Water from rivers, and from canals and ponds. And the moisture the soil itself has held on to.

With rain and irrigation together, some states manage rice all year round: Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.

Three seasons, by name

Indian farming falls mainly into three cropping seasons. They are kharif, rabi and zaid.

Farmers have kept this rhythm for centuries, and it matters for a reason beyond the farm: because the seasons are staggered, a wide variety of produce is available all year, which helps keep the country fed.

Where the names come from

The three words are Arabic in origin, and they have been in use since the Mughal period.

The rhythm, though, is older than the names. Before the Arabic terms spread, these crops were called something else: kedara for the wet ones, haimana for the winter ones, graishmika for the summer ones.

Kharif, the monsoon season

Kharif is sown with the rains and harvested after them, and the conditions are hot with heavy rainfall.

The crops are the big ones. Rice and maize. Jowar and bajra. Groundnut. Sugarcane and cotton.

Rabi, the winter season

Rabi is sown as the monsoon ends and harvested in spring, through cool months with less water about.

Wheat heads the list. Then barley, peas, mustard and gram.

Zaid, the summer season

Zaid is the short one, squeezed into the hot months between the rabi harvest and the next monsoon.

Its crops suit that: watermelon and muskmelon, cucumber and pumpkin. Things that grow fast and like the heat.

Each season has its own risk

The three seasons do not share their dangers, and kharif shows this best.

Kharif crops depend on the monsoon arriving when it should. Too much rain is no better than too little, because heavy rainfall destroys crops outright, and the distress that follows falls hardest on farming families.

An ancient eye on the same problem

The Arthashastra thought about this exact question, and its answer is precise. It describes what a good rainy season looks like, measured by how the rain is spread rather than how much falls.

A third of the year's rain should come at the start of the season and at its close, in the months it calls Shravana and Kartika, with two thirds in the middle, across Praushthapada and Ashvayuja. Ask why that distribution and not another, and the answer is the crop cycle: rain is wanted when the plants need it, not all at once.

Scenario:

Two farmers record the same annual rainfall. One farms near Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu and takes three crops off his land that year. The other farms in a district of western Uttar Pradesh and takes two, and the second of those needs his tube well running for weeks. A visiting student concludes that the southern farmer must simply be more skilful, since the rainfall figures match. His teacher says the figure is the least informative number on the page, and asks him to look at when the rain fell rather than how much.

Analysis:

One rainfall total, two very different farming years, and an explanation that credits skill where the chapter credits timing.

Activity:

Find out which months bring rain where you live, and which crops follow them.

Title:

Build your own cropping calendar

Safety:

No hazards here.

What You Notice:

Zaid usually looks the safest on paper because it is short, and kharif the riskiest because every one of its months depends on the monsoon behaving. That is the chapter own judgement: kharif needs the rain to arrive on time and to stop short of destroying.

Kharif, rabi and zaid are Arabic words, in use here since Mughal times.

Before them the seasons were called kedara, haimana and graishmika.

Rice grows all year round in Tamil Nadu, in West Bengal and in Andhra Pradesh.

Kharif rains, rabi cools, zaid bakes.

Southwest June to September; northeast October to December.

The thinnest layer that matters

The crust of the Earth carries a thin upper layer, and that layer is soil. It is what holds plant life up.

It takes a very long time to arrive. Rocks break down, dead plants and animals rot, and over millions of years the two together make soil. For a farmer it is the most essential resource there is, supplying nutrients, water and something for roots to grip.

How it gets made

The chapter prints the sequence, and it runs in four stages. Bedrock begins to break apart.

Organic material arrives and speeds that breaking up along. Layers start to form, of mineral fragments and organic matter. And finally a developed soil holds thick vegetation.

How long that takes

Put a number on it and the number is startling, because it is really a range.

Soil formation runs from about a century to several thousand years. A farmer can lose in one bad season what took longer than a dynasty to build.

Three words for the process

Weathering is the breaking down of rocks and minerals into soil particles, whether by physical, chemical or biological means.

Bedrock is the original rock that new rocks and soils come from, through weathering, erosion and other processes. And silt is a fine, dust-like sediment of rock and mineral particles, bigger than clay and smaller than sand, which is why rivers carry it so easily from the mountains down to the plains.

The dark part

One more word, and it is the one that does the work. The dark organic matter in a soil is its humus, made as plant and animal matter decomposes.

It is rich in nutrients and it holds moisture in the soil. Humus is simply the Latin word for earth, or soil.

Twelve kinds, and six

Ancient texts already classified soil. The Amarakosha describes twelve types of agricultural land, sorted by how fertile each is.

Today we use six major types. Alluvial soil and black soil. Red soil and laterite soil. Then desert soil, and the soil of the mountains, called alpine.

Alluvial, and black

Alluvial soil is silt brought down by rivers from the mountains and plateaus: mud, sand and other fine particles. It is rich in nutrients.

Black soil is also called cotton soil, and it comes from volcanic rock weathering. It holds a great deal of moisture, and it is very fertile.

Red, and laterite

Red soil comes from the weathering of lava that cooled slowly, or of old rocks. The red comes from iron in it, which turns reddish on meeting air and water. It is not very fertile.

Brick earth, otherwise called laterite soil, is made where rain weathers rock. It goes hard in hot weather. Most of its minerals get washed away, leaving mainly iron and aluminium, and it is not fertile either.

Sandy, and alpine

Sandy soil is mostly small grains of sand. Add a little water, air and organic matter to those grains and sandy soil is what you get.

Alpine soil comes from ice freezing and melting, which weathers the rock. The result is thin, rough and rocky.

Read the fertility off the history

Now put those six side by side and a pattern appears. Nothing about fertility is arbitrary.

A river delivering nutrients makes rich soil. Volcanic rock weathering makes rich soil. Rain washing minerals out makes poor soil. Ice splitting rock makes thin soil. The history is the explanation.

What the soil map means for crops

Crops are strongly shaped by the soil they sit in, as well as by the agroclimatic conditions.

So the chapter prints a second map, of crops against soil areas. One footnote on it is worth more than the lists: a few crops are marked as growing where the soil is not ideal for them, managed by efficient irrigation.

Soil is alive

Healthy soil matters for a good harvest, and healthy means something precise here. Soil is a complex ecosystem.

Living in it are bacteria and fungi, earthworms and insects. Present in it are minerals, organic matter as humus, water and air. The organisms break organic material down, which improves the health of the soil, which lets it hold healthy plants.

Looking after it: the old ways

Soil conservation means managing soil so it does not degrade and keeps producing. Our ancestors had several ingenious methods.

Crop rotation grows different crops in the same field in different seasons, so the soil does not lose one particular nutrient. Multiple cropping grows several crops in one field at once, which cuts the risk from pests and makes sure at least one crop survives.

Two more old methods

The crops in multiple cropping were chosen so that the same field gave harvests periodically rather than all at once.

Contour ploughing follows a slope own curves instead of running straight down it, so rainwater cannot carry the soil off. And organic fertilisers such as cow dung put nutrients back.

A mixture of five

One traditional preparation deserves its own note. Panchagavya ferments five things the cow gives. Dung and urine. Milk, curd and ghee.

Recent studies find it works as a biofertiliser, helping crops grow and produce more, and making them better able to resist disease.

And the new ways

Today terracing is used on hilly land, cutting flat steps that slow water running downhill and so reduce erosion. Afforestation, which is planting trees, does the same job another way.

Some old methods are still in use: mulching, and ploughing crop residue back into the field. And applying fertiliser very precisely uses less of it while keeping the soil healthy.

Scenario:

Two neighbours farm a hill slope. The upper farmer ploughs straight up and down because it is easier with a single bullock, grows the same crop every season, and uses only bought chemical fertiliser. The lower farmer ploughs along the curve of the slope, changes crops between seasons, and spreads cow dung. After four heavy monsoons the upper field has lost depth and its yields are falling, while the lower field is unchanged. The upper farmer says the difference must be the fertiliser, and plans to buy more.

Analysis:

Three different practices differ between the two fields, and the farmer has blamed the one that explains least.

Activity:

Look at a slope near you after rain and see which way the water has cut channels.

Title:

Make a soil column

Safety:

Wash your hands afterwards, and keep the lid tight while shaking.

What You Notice:

The heaviest particles settle first, so sand goes to the bottom, then silt, then clay, with organic matter floating on top. That order is the chapter definition of silt made visible: particles larger than clay and smaller than sand, which is exactly why rivers carry silt furthest.

Humus is simply the Latin word for earth or soil.

The Amarakosha sorted agricultural land into twelve types by fertility.

Soil can take anywhere from a century to several thousand years to form.

Six soils: alluvial, black, red, laterite, desert, alpine.

Panchagavya: dung, urine, milk, curd, ghee.

Nothing grows without it

Water is a basic resource for farming, and the chapter puts it bluntly: with no water, crops do not grow.

How much water a place has is one of the big things that decides how farming is done there. Two kinds of practice follow, and they are worth separating carefully.

Waiting on the rain

Rain-fed farming leans on rainfall and nothing else. It is common where the monsoon brings enough.

Enough, though, is not the same as reliable, and that is the whole difficulty.

What a rain-fed farmer faces

Droughts, first. And monsoons that cannot be predicted, which is a separate problem from monsoons that fail.

Farmers have worked out ways round it. Picking crops that stand up to drought is one. Using the old water-harvesting techniques is another.

Choosing when to water

Irrigated farming supplies water to crops by artificial means. It lifts what a farm can produce, and it loosens the grip the monsoon has on a farmer.

That is the real gain: not more water, but water at the moment the crop wants it.

As old as the cities

Irrigation in India has a very long history. Water structures have been going up here ever since the days of the Indus civilisation.

Something else grew alongside them, and it is the best evidence of how widely they spread.

Ten words for holding water

A rich vocabulary of water structures developed across the country. Kull and kund. Ahar and pokhar.

Khadin, and arakere. Kolam, and surangam. Tadagam, and eri. Ten names, and the chapter says these are only some of them.

What that vocabulary tells you

Stop and think about what a list like that means. These are not ten words for one thing.

Each names a structure that suited one place: its rainfall, its rock, its slope. A country with one kind of water problem would have needed one word.

Two traditional systems

Phad systems are irrigation run by the community, and Maharashtra is where they are especially found. Small canals take river water across to the fields.

Bamboo drip irrigation belongs to parts of northeastern India. Farmers there have piped spring water down to their fields in bamboo for a very long time.

And the simplest of all

Farmers also dig small ponds. The ponds catch rainwater, and the soil nearby stays moist for longer than it otherwise would.

No pipes, no canals. Just somewhere for water to wait.

A structure still working

Part 1 of this textbook introduced Kallanai, the grand anicut. Karikala built it across the Kaveri about 1,800 years ago.

It is massive, it is effective, and it still diverts water to irrigate thousands of hectares of land.

A lake, and a queen

The Munsar Lake at Viramgam in Gujarat looks natural and is not. Minaldevi, a queen of the Chaulukya dynasty, had it made in the eleventh century CE.

Many lakes in Indian cities are artificial like this one. What stands on its banks is the detail to keep: small shrines, and a few larger temples, a reminder that water bodies have long been held sacred.

Water to the root

Irrigation has moved from simple systems to advanced ones, and two modern methods matter most.

Drip irrigation, also called trickle irrigation, takes water slowly and straight to the roots of a plant, carried there by tubes and emitters.

Imagine small pipes with tiny holes, laid near the base of your plants and joined to a water supply.

Turn the water on and it drips out steadily, wetting only the roots. Nothing is thrown into the air and nothing runs off, so very little is wasted.

Rain you switch on

Sprinkler irrigation does the opposite. It sprays water up into the air, and the water comes down over the crops like rain that somebody arranged.

Both methods use water more carefully, and there is a hard reason why that is needed: in many parts of India the groundwater reserves are falling fast.

What irrigation changed

Together these have reshaped Indian farming. Crops can now be grown in places where the rain is low.

Yields have risen, and the country food supply is steadier than it was.

Seeds, handed down

The other key part of farming is seed, and the chapter describes how seed used to travel.

Families passed it down the generations. Communities kept it and shared it. In some areas a woman carries seed among the gifts she brings to her marital home. The best-yielding seeds were picked out carefully and kept for the next planting.

A coat before planting

The Indian Council for Agricultural Research has worked up a method using a paste called beejamrit.

It is made from cow dung and urine together with other materials, and seeds are coated with it before they go in. Two things follow: the seed is less likely to spoil, and it takes less time to germinate.

An invention worth noticing

The Indian seed drill was an ingenious thing, invented by ancient Indian farmers.

One pass of it did three jobs at once: preparing the soil, planting the seed, and closing the furrow over it. Doing in one operation what would otherwise take three cut the labour sharply.

Seeds today, and the catch

More and more farmers now buy seed from companies. Scientific processes have gone into them, so they yield more and they resist pests.

But there is a catch, and it has drawn real criticism. The seeds such a plant later produces are often not fit to be planted the following season. So the farmer must buy again, and that creates a dependency on the seed companies.

Scenario:

Two villages share a hillside. The upper village has piped spring water into its fields through split bamboo for as long as anyone remembers, and the fields are small. The lower village sank a deep borewell twelve years ago, flooded its fields from it, and doubled what it grew. Last summer the borewell ran dry for six weeks and the village lost a crop. A visiting official proposes sinking a second, deeper borewell. The sarpanch of the upper village suggests drip lines instead, and is told that bamboo people cannot advise on modern farming.

Analysis:

Two water systems, one failure, and a proposal that treats the cause as the remedy.

Activity:

Find out where the water for the nearest farmland comes from, and whether anyone measures it.

Title:

Build a drip line and measure it

Safety:

Use cool water and keep the pin away from your fingers.

What You Notice:

The poured pot usually loses a good deal through the bottom within a minute, while the drip bottle loses almost none. That is the chapter point about targeted delivery: the same quantity of water does more work when it arrives slowly at the root.

Kallanai still irrigates thousands of hectares after about 1,800 years.

The Munsar Lake was made by Minaldevi, a Chaulukya queen, in the eleventh century.

One pass of the Indian seed drill did three jobs at once.

Rain-fed waits; irrigation chooses.

Drip goes down to the root; sprinklers come down from above.

Soil and plant as one thing

Traditional farming starts from a view of what a field is. It treats the plant and the soil, the whole soil ecosystem included, as a single complete system.

The soil is taken to be the main source of nutrients, with farmyard manure supplying more. Bacteria and fungi there turn those nutrients into forms a plant can take up easily. And the plants feed energy back to those organisms through their roots.

Read that exchange again. The plants are not simply drawing on the soil; they are paying into it. A system built on that idea keeps the organisms alive, because they are what makes the nutrients available at all.

Small, and tied to the place

Traditional farming is usually small in scale, leans on the resources at hand, and stays tied to its environment.

Terrace farming is the example. On a hilly slope, farmers cut steps into the hillside to make flat land, which stops soil washing away and holds water back.

Two named systems

Traditional systems are often lined up with the ritu chakra, the cycle of the seasons, and they lean on the family and on domestic animals.

Kulagar is one. The word is Konkani: kula means family, agar means storehouse. Around their homes, on a structured irrigated design, families grow medicinal plants and spices, vegetables and fruit, and crops both for eating and for sale. It is common in the Konkan Plains of Goa.

Gokrishi is the other, and the cow is at the centre of it. Cows provide the manure used as organic fertiliser, and bullocks pull the plough. Nothing in the arrangement needs buying in.

The figure that settles the argument

Here is the strongest number in the chapter. Almost five thousand traditional practices have been documented by ICAR, and over a hundred of them tested.

Modern science bore out more than 85 per cent of the ones tested, which could then cut chemical use and improve the soil. So the old methods are not folklore awaiting replacement.

What the Arthashastra told a sower

The Arthashastra is specific about preparing seed, and three instructions show how specific.

Cow dung was to be smeared on cotton seed. Pulses, beans and cereals were to lie in dew a set number of days and then dry in the sun before going in. For sugarcane the cut end took a mixture of honey, of ghee and of lard, and cow dung went over the top.

The turning point

Contemporary agriculture means modern methods: technology, machinery, new techniques. The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was the turning point.

Four things came in with it, among others. Machinery to do the work. Fertiliser and pesticide out of a factory. Far more land under irrigation. And seed of the high-yielding varieties, known as HYV.

What it achieved

Food grain production rose sharply, wheat and rice in particular, and India reached self-sufficiency in food.

Farms took up tractors, harvesters and other machinery, and the work grew quicker and lighter. Since then agriculture has been called the backbone of the Indian economy. M.S. Swaminathan, who was the architect of the Green Revolution, received the Bharat Ratna.

What it cost

Over the last few decades its limits have become visible, and the chapter lists them without softening.

The soil was impoverished over the long term. Groundwater was depleted. Soil and water were contaminated by pesticides and fertilisers. Human and animal health was damaged, and many scientific studies have established a multiplication of cancer cases in rural areas. A growing number of the world agricultural scientists now question whether this kind of farming can last.

A third path

Recent years have seen growing interest in marrying what modern methods can produce to what traditional ones know, so that farming may last. That approach draws on Indian Knowledge Systems.

Organic farming is one example, now resurgent. It does without chemical fertilisers and pesticides, using compost instead, and seed cake, which is what is left after oil has been pressed from seeds, and animal manure.

Neem, and Sikkim

Neem-based pesticides are another example. Being natural, they do the environment far less harm than a chemical one does.

And one state has gone the whole way. Sikkim is the first fully organic state in the world. It banned chemical fertilisers and pesticides in 2014 and took up natural farming practices instead.

The trade-off, stated plainly

Compare the two and a trade-off appears. Modern techniques are highly productive, and can produce a great deal of food quickly.

But the harm was long-term. Chemicals dissolve into water sources and pollute them, and they harm creatures such as bees, which pollination depends on. Traditional methods tend to last and to recover better, Nature being worked with rather than against, and their yield may be lower. Striking the balance is the challenge.

What the government does

In many states the government runs a support system. It helps farmers get seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, and supplies weather forecasts along with research and training on new practices.

Electricity for irrigation is sold cheaper, which brings input costs down. Crop insurance comes through schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. And important crops are bought from farmers, so marketing the produce is no difficulty and the price is fair. Promoting cold storage helps too, and so does digital technology, which brings market news within reach.

The land keeps shrinking

Now the difficulties, and the first is arithmetic. Holdings get divided among family members over the generations, so they keep shrinking.

The average is now about three-quarters of a hectare, roughly a football field, and a farmer cannot earn very much on that. Tractors are hard to use there as well, being built for larger farms and costly to buy or rent, though machines for small farms have lately been designed too.

Many incomes, and still not enough

Farming families have traditionally had other sources of income besides their crops. They keep cows, goats and poultry, practise apiculture or fishing. Where they can they gather forest produce, and many raise trees along the bunds, for timber and for fruit.

The chapter sums that up in three words: diversity builds resilience. And then it says plainly that this is no longer enough today for a decent quality of life.

Climate change, and the Ganga

Farmers face something larger than any of this as well. Weather patterns are growing less predictable, with untimely rains, and extreme events such as severe drought or heavy rainfall are more frequent. Crops are at higher risk of destruction, and losses can be heavy.

The Ganga basin shows what this looks like at scale. Its rich alluvial soil has fed and watered people for millennia, over 500 million of them today. Yet the river has been under stress for some years and cannot replenish itself as it did. Parts cannot be navigated in summer at all, the water lying too low for even a river boat.

Why, and what follows

The causes are several at once. Global warming is melting Himalayan glaciers at an unprecedented rate. Hundreds of dams stand between the river and its natural flow. Groundwater is drawn out in enormous quantities by farms and by factories. And irrigation takes a great deal of the water away.

Solutions exist. But if the Ganga stays like this, farming across its basin may last less and less well, and that threatens millions of livelihoods. Hardship has often pushed farmers into loans they struggle to repay, catching them in a debt trap, and by some estimates as many as 2,300 a day have given up farming altogether. The chapter ends in hope: with the new approaches it describes, agriculture may yet flourish everywhere in India.

Scenario:

A farmer inherited eight hectares in 1970 and adopted every new method of the time. He bought high-yielding seed, sank a tube well, and used chemical fertiliser and pesticide heavily. His yields trebled within a decade. Today his three sons farm the same land, divided three ways. Yields have been falling for fifteen years, the tube well must be sunk deeper every few years, and the eldest son has taken a loan to buy more fertiliser. A neighbour who kept cows for manure and rotated his crops yields less per hectare but has borrowed nothing.

Analysis:

One family, one plot, and almost every difficulty the chapter names arriving in sequence.

Activity:

Ask an older farmer or gardener which practice they have given up, and why.

Title:

Weigh the trade-off yourself

Safety:

No hazards here.

What You Notice:

Most people pick modern for one year and traditional for fifty, which is precisely the trade-off the chapter sets out, and precisely why its own answer is neither column but a balance between them.

Over 85 per cent of the traditional practices ICAR tested stood up to modern science.

Sikkim became the first fully organic state in the world after a ban in 2014.

The average Indian landholding is about the size of a football field.

Green Revolution: seeds, water, chemicals, machines.

Kula is family, agar is storehouse.