Agriculture in India

The history of Agriculture in India dates back to Indus Valley Civilization and even before that in some places of Southern India. India ranks second worldwide in farm outputs. As per 2018, agriculture employed 50% of the Indian work force and contributed 17-18% to country's GDP.

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F

• The Rohillas, especially the lower classes, were, with but few exceptions, the only sect of Mahometans in India who exercised the profession of husbandry; and their improvements of the various branches of agriculture, were amply recompensed by the abundance and superiour quality of the production of Rohilcund.
  • Forster G. A Journey from Bengal to England: Through the Northern Part of India I 1970, p. 120. [1] quoted from Jain, M. (2010). Parallel pathways: Essays on Hindu-Muslim relations, 1707-1857. page 71

G

• If farmers become weak the country loses self-reliance but if they are strong, freedom also becomes strong. If we do not maintain our progress in agriculture, poverty cannot be eliminated from India. But our biggest poverty alleviation programme is to improve the living standard of our farmers. The thrust of our poverty alleviation programmes is on the uplift of the farmers.
  • Rajiv Gandhi, Inagural Speech at the 25th National Convention of the Bharat Krishak Samaj, Hyderabad, 15 February 1988. Transcript printed in Selected Speeches and Writings: 1 January 1988-31 December 1988 (Publications Division, India, 1989), p. 180. Quoted in Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhi (Concept Publishing Co., 2009), p. 25

M

• There is really no Indian agriculture as such, but a group of related regional complexes differing in important details, including inventories of cultivated plants. Sanskrit, being a supraregional language, incorporates terms relating to various regional features.
  • Masica (1979) 1979. "Aryan and Non-Aryan Elements in North Indian Agriculture." In Aryan and Non-Aryan in India (55-151). Ed. M. Deshpande and P. Hook. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. (58). quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 5

R

• May the ploughshares break up our land happily; may the ploughman go happily with the oxen; may Parjanya (water the earth) with sweet showers happily.
  • Rigveda, III, 57, as translated by H. H. Wilson (1857)

W

• The conquest, the quickened pace of commerce, and the increase of traffic between India and the heartlands of the Umayyad and Abbāsid caliphates, as well as western Asia, Africa and Europe, also led to a noteworthy dissemination of numerous Indian crops... and new agricultural techniques to parts of the world far beyond India. This process was relatively slow and less easily visible, but its results revolutionised agriculture and may well have been the most significant legacy of early Muslim rule in Sind over the long term.
  • Andre Wink, in The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 3