India's agricultural landscape

Why does Maharashtra grow so much cotton, and Punjab so much wheat? This chapter tells the story of Indian farming — one of the oldest jobs people have ever done.

Agriculture (farming) means preparing the soil, growing plants, raising animals (livestock), and often growing trees as part of the same farm. Some farmers also rear fish (pisciculture) or rear silkworm cocoons for silk thread. So, broadly, agriculture covers farming, animal husbandry (raising livestock), forestry and horticulture (growing fruit, vegetables and flowers).

The word comes from Latin: agri means field and culture means to grow or cultivate. The Government of India groups these jobs as 'agriculture and allied activities': crops, livestock, beekeeping (apiculture), fisheries, silk-making, and fibre crops such as cotton and hemp.

Two numbers worth putting side by side:

• About 46 per cent of India's working people earn their living from agriculture and allied activities.
• But these activities produce only a little over 18 per cent of the total value of everything the country produces in a year (its GDP, 2022–23).

Nearly half the workers, producing less than a fifth of the value: that means the average farming family earns much less than families in other work. Keep this gap in mind; it explains a lot of the farmers' difficulties later in the chapter.

Many Indian families are closely tied to the land, and have farmed it for generations. And of course, farming feeds everyone.

When you hear the word 'farmer', who do you picture? Many people imagine a man, perhaps an old man in a turban. But in rural India, more than 75 per cent of the people working in agriculture are women (2025). Women do most of the farm work, from sowing to harvesting and threshing (separating the grain from the straw or husk).

From the golden wheat fields of Punjab and the saffron valley of Kashmir to the tea gardens of the Northeast and the Nilgiris and the green paddy fields of Kerala, farming is part of India's identity. What grows where depends on several things: the soil, the climate, the water available, the terrain (the shape of the land) and more.