Food Crops

Agriculture is considered to one of the major activities in India. All over India, a wide variety of crops are grown. Approximately, two thirds of the Indian population is into farming and agriculture.

In India, food crops are those crops which are mainly cultivated for selling and also for live stock consumption. We can classify the Indian food crops into many different segments: the main segments are wheat, rice, corn (maize), pulses (dried peas, beans and lentils) and coarse grains (millets and sorghum). While growing a crop, many factors are taken into consideration. These include the texture of the soil, climate of the region as well as the use of technology to influence the productivity as well as the growth of the main food crops in India. In India, about 127.5 million hectares of land is used for the growth of food grains. These food grains account for 75% of the total cultivated area. For the cultivation of rice, more than 33% of cropland is used, for coarse grains it is roughly 29% for and the remainder is equally divided between wheat and pulses. Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, West Bengal Karnataka, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Orissa are some of the major states which produce the majority of the food crops in India. Here are some of them:

• Rice
• Wheat
• Maize
• Millets
• Barley Pulses

Rice

Rice is considered to be a staple food of India especially to the people of the eastern and southern parts of India.  We can find rice fields Rice all over The India subcontinent.  As many as 2, 00, 000 different varieties of rice can be found growing in India. The reason for this is that rice can be easily grown under variable climatic conditions and altitude. Rice is a crop which is rain-fed especially in those zones areas the annual rainfall distribution is above 125 cm. Areas having 20 degree Celsius climate are ideally suitable for the cultivation of rice. All of these factors make rice to be regarded as the master crop in the coastal regions of India.

Wheat

Wheat is a kind of food crop which has led to the growth of city-based societies when civilization started. The reason for this is that rice was considered to the first crop which was very easy to cultivate on a large scale. Another benefit of growing rice is that it could yield a harvest which can be stored for a long period of time. Wheat is also the first cereal which is known to have been domesticated. It is from the times of the Fertile Crescent that the cultivation of wheat is known as per the archaeological records.

Maize

The Americans were the first people to introduce the concept of maize cultivation to the Indians in the 17th century. Maize is regarded to be an important food crop in India. It is cultivated in the hilly and submontane tracts and the Great Plains. Green maize is able to give the people sweet and succulent fodder. Maize finds its place next to jowar and bajra and is considered to be a millet crop. Maize can be found growing in 7.7% of the cropped part of the country. Mize is chiefly cultivated in Andhra Pradesh (21.1%), Karnataka (18.56%), Bihar (9.25%), Rajasthan (7.48%) and Madhya Pradesh (8.5%) of all India production.

Millets

Similar to Jowar, bajra, maize and ragi, Millet is considered to be an important cereal crop of India. Millets can be found growing in the dry areas of the Deccan, Gujarat and Rajasthan. It is also known as a Kharif crop. It is cultivated in those regions where there is scant rainfall to grow rice as it is in these areas that the rainfall continues to decrease from semi-humid to semi-arid regions.

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