Agriculture
Agriculture in India has a long history , dating back to ten thousand years. Agriculture has begun by 9000 BC as a result of early cultivation of plants, and domestication of crops and animals. Due to agriculture, settled life style was development soon followed by improvements in agriculture implements and techniques paved way for development of agriculture in India and the prevailed double monsoons led to two harvests being reaped in one year.
Today, India ranks second worldwide in farm output. Agriculture and allied sectors like forestry and logging accounted for 16.6% of the GDP in 2007, employed 52% of the total workforce.
Agriculture is the largest economic sector and plays a significant role in the overall social-economic development of India. India is among the world’s leading producers of paddy rice, wheat, buffalo milk, cow milk and sugar cane.
It is also the second largest producer of wheat and cow milk. The top three agricultural products produced in the world are wheat, cow milk and cattle meat and top producers of these products are China for wheat and USA for both cow milk and cattle meat.
The Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), established in 1905, was responsible for the research leading to the ” Indian Green Revolution ” of the 1970s. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is the apex body in agriculture and related allied fields, including research and education. The Union Minister of Agriculture is the President of the ICAR. The Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute develops new techniques for the design of agricultural experiments, analyses data in agriculture, and specializes in statistical techniques for animal and plant breeding.
India ’s agricultural sector has made long steps in developing its potential. The green revolution massively increased the production of vital food grains and introduced technological innovations into agriculture. This progress is clearly shown in India’s net trade position.
Where once India had to depend on imports to feed its people, since 1990 it is a net exporter of agri-food products. Its agriculture is large and diverse and its sheer size means that even slight changes in its trade have significant effects on world agricultural markets. In the current agriculture system constrains like frequent failure of monsoon, increase in the investment of the agricultural inputs, lack of man power and less profit from the agriculture business has made agriculture a lest area of interest in terms of business and growing trend of converting agricultural lands for real estate business also reduce agricultural activities in India.
Overall food supply of this world is depending on agriculture is possible by achieving higher production by reducing the investments upon the inputs.
Aquaculture
Aquaculture may simply be referred as ‘Underwater Agriculture’. Over the years, the enormous increase in the growth rate of aquaculture has been in response to declines in commercial harvests of wild stocks of fish and shellfish. Top aquaculture producers In 2008 were China with 62 percent of world aquaculture production of fish, crustaceans and molluscs (32.7 million tonnes). Other countries producing over one million tonnes in the same year are India (3.5 million tonnes), Vietnam (2.5 million tonnes), Indonesia (1.7 million tonnes), Thailand (1.4 million tonnes) and Bangladesh (1 million tonnes). Carps are the most cultured species in the world with 39 percent of production by volume. Other major groups cultured include shellfishes (oysters, clams, mussels and scallops), other freshwater fish includes tilapias, followed by shrimps, prawns and salmons. At single species value level, white leg shrimp generated the highest value (USD 9 billion) in 2008, followed by Atlantic salmon (USD 7.2 billion), grass carp (USD 4.8 billion), silver carp (USD 4.8 billion).
India is a major maritime state and an important aquaculture country in the world. It is also home for more than 10% of global fish biodiversity. India has achieved considerable production increases in aquaculture, especially in the production of freshwater fishes and shrimps. While progress in research and development of new technologies have already made in mollusk culture, seaweed culture, and in culture of certain marine fishes like seabass these have not yet taken off on commercial scale. The production gap in aquaculture between China and India or other important Asian countries are very wide, so effective utilization of the diversity of our marine living resources for aquaculture, in the long coastline will increase Indian aquaculture production.
