Mains Practice Questions

Approach

• Introduce with what is crop diversification.
• Enumerate the present challenges before crop diversification.
• Discuss the emerging technologies provide an opportunity for crop diversification.
• Conclude suitably.

Answer

Crop diversification refers to the addition of new crops or cropping systems to agricultural production on a particular farm taking into account the different returns from value-added crops with complementary marketing opportunities. The aim of crop diversification is to increase crop portfolio so that farmers are not dependent on a single crop to generate their income.

Benefits:

• At present, 70-80% farmers have land below 2 hectares. To overcome this, existing cropping  patterns must be diversified with high value crops such as maize, pulses, etc.
• Crop diversification can better tolerate the ups and downs in price of various farm products and it may ensure economic stability of farming products.
• It refers to sudden adverse weather conditions like erratic rainfall, drought, hail, incidence of insect and pest disease. Under this situation, crop diversification through mixed cropping may be useful.
• Most of the Indian population suffers from malnutrition. Crops like pulses, oilseed, horticulture and vegetables can improve socio-economic status by adding quality to the food basket and also improve soil health with the aim of food safety and nutritional security.
• Adoption of crop diversification helps in conservation of natural resources like introduction of legume in rice-wheat cropping system which has the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen to help sustain soil fertility.

Challenges:

• Majority of cropped area in the country is completely dependent on rainfall.
• Sub-optimal and over-use of resources like land and water cause a negative impact on the  environment and sustainability of agriculture.
• Inadequate supply of seeds and plants of improved cultivars.
• Fragmentation of land holding less favouring modernisation and mechanisation of agriculture.
• Poor basic infrastructure like rural roads, power, transport, communications, etc.
• Inadequate post-harvest technologies and inadequate infrastructure for post-harvest handling of perishable horticultural produce.
• Very weak agro-based industry.
• Weak research – extension – farmer linkages.
• Inadequately trained human resources together with persistent and large-scale illiteracy among farmers.
• Host of diseases and pests affecting most crop plants.
• Poor database for horticultural crops.
• Decreased investments in the agricultural sector over the years.

Role of emerging technologies in crop diversification:

• With the help of IT revolution, farmers are directly connected with grocery-customers (farm to fork model) leading to cultivation of high value perishable products (e.g., Big Basket, BlinkIt startup platforms).
• Aquaponics and urban farming are a technique of controlled environment cultivation which help in crop diversification in order to meet the heavy urban demand for perishable items.
• Through financial inclusion and digitisation, small farmers and women self-help groups have been able to ensure crop diversification by credit supply.
• In arid areas, technologies like Urea Deep Placement (UDP), Poly-bag Nursery farming, etc. have been introduced by Indo-Israel Agriculture Project.
• Soil health management assisted in facilitating right fertiliser usage, developing organic farming and providing GIS based thematic mapping for soil.