GS Paper III

News Excerpt: 

The "factors of technology" – genetics, crop nutrition, crop protection and agronomic interventions – have boosted agricultural growth in India despite shrinking cultivable land.

History of Agriculture Production

 Indian agriculture has witnessed wide variations in growth performance during a span of six decades after independence.

• In the pre-green revolution period, rice cultivation in this region was limited to a small area, mostly an aromatic basmati variety with a productive potential of about 1 t ha.

• The variability was particularly pronounced due to the subsistence nature of farming in India and the sector’s heavy dependence on monsoon and other climatic parameters. In the initial years after the inception of planned development, green revolution technologies fired up growth in the sector for nearly three decades. 

  • The pre-green revolution period (1950-51 to 1967-68) was characterised by a steep decline in growth in GDP agriculture, with decadal growth rates found to plummet sharply from 2.78 per cent to 1.06 per cent between 1950-51 and 1967-68. 

“Factors of production”: Land, water, labour and energy

Agriculture has four “factors of production”: Land, water, labour and energy. Farmers use these factors or inputs to produce crops. For a given level of technology, their output is largely determined by the quantity of inputs used.

• Land: The quality of agricultural land is determined by soil fertility and water availability. The Alluvial soil is the most fertile soil, which is found in the Indo-Gangetic plains and the eastern coast's Kaveri, Krishna, Godavari, and Mahanadi deltas, followed by the black cotton soils of the Deccan, Malwa, and Saurashtra plateaus. These produce more crop per acre than red, brown, laterite, mountain, and desert soils, listed in descending order of fertility.

• Water: Water availability is determined by rainfall and irrigation access from rivers, lakes, tanks, and ponds. The major ancient civilisations arose primarily in river valleys that could support vibrant agriculture.

• Labour and Energy: In terms of labour and energy, in traditional agriculture, the more farm hands and bullocks there were to work the land, the more produce there was to harvest. Bullocks were farms' primary source of energy before introducing tractors, threshers, harvester combines, and electric/diesel engine-driven tubewells. They ploughed the fields, treaded the crops to separate the grain from the chaff, and powered the Persian wheels, which drew water from wells for irrigation.

Factors Of Technology

Today, agriculture commonly employs advanced technologies such as robotics, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial imagery, and GPS technology. Precision agriculture, robotic technologies, and modern devices enable enterprises to be more profitable, efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly.

• There are four “factors of technology” in agriculture. Technology enables more efficient use of production factors. They result in higher yields – more produce from the same acre of land or number of labourers – besides better utilisation of water resources and replacement of animal and human power with mechanical and electrical power.

Four Factors of Technology are Genetics, Crop nutrition, Crop protection and Agronomic interventions.

• Genetics: 

• • Genetics in Plants: Traditional cultivars with tall and slender plants did not respond well to fertiliser or water application. They leaned over or dropped flat on the ground when their ear-heads were heavy with well-filled grains. The sturdy stems of the new semi-dwarf types kept the grain-bearing panicles upright even when highly fertilised, allowing them to absorb more nutrients and convert them to grain.

• • • Genetics is concerned with seeds and plant breeding. Without high-yielding wheat and rice varieties, there would have been no Green Revolution. These kinds contained dwarfing genes, which caused the plants to grow shorter.

• Cross Breeding: Plants have genes that code for proteins (enzymes) responsible for disease and insect resistance, drought and heat stress tolerance, nutrient usage efficiency, or even stem sturdiness and erect/compact canopy to allow mechanised harvesting. All of these desired features are encoded in the seeds of plant varieties/hybrids generated through crossbreeding and agricultural biotechnology techniques.

• • For Cattle: Farmers raised cattle not just for draught power and milk but also for their excreta, which provided the nutrients required for plant growth. Farmyard manure, a degraded mixture of dung and urine combined with other agricultural leftovers, contains an average of 0.5% nitrogen (N), 0.2% phosphorous (P), and 0.5% potassium (K).

• Crop- Nutrition

• • Chemical fertilisers with substantially higher NPK content came in a crop nutrition revolution: urea (46% N), di-ammonium phosphate (18% N and 46% P), and muriate of potash (60% K). Crop yields soared due to the use of synthetic fertilisers in conjunction with the breeding of varieties that respond to high nitrogen dosages. Farmers also saved labour by not caring for animals or collecting, storing, and composting their manure; the fertilisers arrived from factories in bagged, ready-to-use form.

• Crop Protection: 

• • With increased yields came crop protection systems, which guard plants against insect pests, diseases (fungi, bacteria, and viruses), and weeds from sowing to harvesting and sale. 

• Agronomic Intervention:

• • The last technological aspect is mechanisation and other agronomic treatments. Tractors, in addition to making bullocks obsolete, have enabled the employment of devices such as rotavators and reversible mould board ploughs capable of deep tillage, soil mixing and pulverisation, and the breaking of hardpan layers.

    • Agronomic interventions extend to water-saving technologies such as drip irrigation and laser land levellers (which aid in the uniform distribution of seed and fertiliser) and intercropping or growing more than one crop simultaneously on the same plot of land. Pomegranates are now grown on Rajasthan's dry desert soils using drip irrigation and water-soluble/liquid fertilisers. Some use tractor-drawn machinery to create raised beds in fields. Sugarcane is planted in the furrows, and various short-cycle crops such as potatoes, onions, garlic, vegetables, and legumes are planted in the raised beds.

Effects of Production of Technology On Agriculture

Instead of more output from more inputs (“moving along the production function”), productivity increases have delivered more output from the same or even lower levels of inputs. In other words, more crops per acre, per farmhand and drop of water.

• The effects can be seen from the net sown area in India rising by just 3.3% – from 135.4 lh to 139.9 lh – between 1961-62 and 2019-20, as against 14% during 1950-51 to 1961-62. The growth in agricultural production over the last 50 years or more has mainly been due to technological factors.

• The annual growth from 2005-06 to 2021-22, at 3.7%, has been the highest among all phases.

• Biotechnology and genetic engineering have resulted in pest resistance and increased crop yields. 

  • The Bt cotton, a genetically modified crop, was officially approved for ­commercial ­production in the country in 2002, which led to a remarkable breakthrough in cotton production, more than doubling output from 13.6 million bales in 2002/03 to 37.5 million bales in 2019/20.

Way forward:

The impact of agriculture technology in the present and future will be enormous, affecting the sector's trajectory. Farmers may be able to escape the hard labour that they have historically done.

• The presence of technology in agriculture is still spreading on a massive scale, and new inventive concepts are being developed on a regular basis. 

• Farmers will be busy, not for doing hard work, but for understanding modern technologies, with AI in the picture and Nano-technology presenting itself in the farming field. 

Mains PYQ

Q. Explain various types of revolutions, took place in Agriculture after Independence in India. How these revolutions have helped in poverty alleviation and food security in India?  (UPSC 2017)

Q. How is science interwoven deeply with our lives? What are the striking changes in agriculture triggered off by science-based technologies?  (UPSC 2020)