Insights of Agriculture

In the years following Independence, Indian agriculture overcame several challenging situations and achieved phenomenal success to steer the country out of imports based food security to a respectable position of self-reliant food security.Today, Indian agriculture is the single largest private enterprise that sustains livelihood of about two-thirds of the population of India. Agriculture along with other mainstream sectors, therefore, continues to be the major source of strength for the Indian economy.The agricultural production is faced with several constraints-depleting and degrading natural resources, increasing biotic and abiotic stresses, energy supply and decreasing factor productivity. A broad-based diversification of agriculture covering field crops, horticulture, livestock and fisheries and efficiency-mediated improvement in productivity, is the only viable option to enhance agricultural production. The competence of our human resources to achieve self-reliance will be one of the most critical components to attain and sustain velocity and vigour of agricultural growth. In the present edition, an effort has been made to present science-led developments in Indian agriculture, the ongoing research efforts at the national level and some ideas on the shape of future agriculture. We hope that the book would prove to be useful to students, researchers, planners, farmers and other stakeholders. We also welcome suggestions for further improvement of this publication. Finally, I wish to thank all the contributors who wholeheartedly responded to our request and provided specialized information in very simple and easy-to-understand language.