1. Organisation of production

• The production aims to produce the goods and services that we want.
• There are four factors required for the production of goods and services.
• Land and other natural resources such as water, forests, minerals
• Labour (both skilled and unskilled)
• Physical capital is a variety of inputs like tools, machines, and buildings.
• These are used for a long time in the production process hence it is called fixed capital.
• Raw materials and money in hands are called working capital.

2. Factors of production

Multiple cropping

• Growing more than one crop on a piece of land during the year is known as multiple cropping.
• Farmers keep enough wheat for the family’s consumption and sell the surplus at the market.
• It is the most common way of increasing production on a given piece of land.
• Parts of the riverine plains and coastal regions in our country are well irrigated.
• Plateau regions such as the Deccan Plateau have low levels of irrigation.
• More than 60 per cent of the total cultivated area depends on the rainfall in our country.
• Yield is measured as a crop produced on a given piece of land during a single season.
• Till the mid-1960s, the seeds used in cultivation were traditional.
• Traditional seeds need less irrigation compared to modern ones.
• Farmers used cow dung and other natural manure as fertilizers.

3. The Green Revolution

• It is introduced in the late 1960s to the cultivation of wheat and rice using high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of seeds.
• Compared to the traditional seeds, the HYV seeds promised to produce much greater amounts of grain on a single plant.
• HYV seeds needed plenty of water and chemical fertilizers and pesticides to produce the best results.
• Farmers of Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh were the first to try out the modern farming method in India.
• They set up tube wells for irrigation and brought farm machinery like tractors and threshers for ploughing and harvesting.

Land sustainability

• The land is a natural resource, it is necessary to be very careful in its use.
• Scientific reports indicate that modern farming methods have overused the natural resource base.
• The Green Revolution is associated with the loss of soil fertility due to the increased use of chemical fertilizers.
• Groundwater has been reduced due to continuous use.
• These are built up over many years. Once destroyed it is very difficult to restore them.
• It is necessary to take care of the environment to ensure the future development of agriculture.
• Chemical fertilizers provide minerals which dissolve in water and are immediately available to plants.
• But these may not be retained in the soil for long.
• They may escape from the soil and pollute groundwater, rivers and lakes.
• Chemical fertilizers can kill bacteria and other micro-organisms in the soil; resulting in soil being less fertile than ever before.
• Chemical fertilizer consumption in Punjab is the highest in the country.
• Punjab farmers are now forced to use more and more chemical fertilizers and other inputs to achieve the same production level.
• Thus the cost of cultivation is rising very fast.

Labour requirement

• Farming requires a great deal of hard work.
• Small farmers along with their families cultivate their fields.
• Medium and large-scale farmers hire farm labourers to work in their fields.
• Farm labourers come either from landless or cultivating small plots of land.
• Farm labourers do not have a right over the crops grown on the land.
• Instead, they are paid wages by the farmer for whom they work.
• Wages can be cash or crop. Sometimes labourers get meals also.
• Wages vary widely from region to region, from crop to crop from one farm activity to another. There is a wide variation in the duration of employment.
• Farm labourers might be employed daily or for one particular farm activity like harvesting or the whole year.

4. Non-farming activities