Introduction to Green Revolution The introduction of cultivation and management techniques to increase yields within intensive agriculture environments, deal with several modern technological applications such as commercial fertilizer, pesticides, improved hybrid seeds and machinery.
These advances collectively known as the green revolutions, and have been responsible for dramatic increases in yields in recent years.
Green Revolution is defined as an increase in crop production because of the uses of new varieties of seeds, the uses of pesticides and new agricultural techniques.
Meaning of Green Revolution
The green revolution is a term referring to the reformation of agricultural practices resulting in dramatic increases in crop yields.
The green revolution began in Mexico in the 1940s. Then it is spread out to around the world, helping to alleviate mass famine and feed millions of people.
Advantages of the Green Revolution
Nowadays, green revolution is a most common and popular concept which holds the following advantages:
- As a result of the green revolution and the introduction of chemical fertilizers, synthetic herbicides, and pesticides, high-yield crops, and the method of multiple cropping the agricultural industry was able to produce larger quantities of food.
- Producing larger quantities of food, the green revolution was also beneficial for the producers because it made it possible to grow more crops and therefore, increase their profitability.
- The green revolution reduces production costs and also results in cheaper prices for food in the market.
- The green revolution is essentially class-biased in that only those agriculturists with sufficient land and other assets (mainly capital) could afford to adopt its innovations.
- Green revolution also brought diversification in the consumption pattern of the consumers by increasing the level of production.
Disadvantages of Green Revolution
Though Green revolution brings a lot of benefits to the community but it is not free from some difficulties. The important disadvantages are as follows:
- Poor farmers could not afford high-yielding varieties (HyVs) fertilizers and machinery.
- Some persons borrowed capital and ended up with large debts.
- The poor and landless peasants did not have access to these resources even on credit, owing to the lack of sufficient assets for collateral.
- New machinery replaced manual labor leading to unemployment and rural urban migration.
Basic agricultural patterns in India, China, and Japan
Agricultural patterns are defined as trends in the share of the utilized agricultural area (UAA) occupied by the main agricultural land uses (arable land, permanent grassland, and land under permanent crops).
Agricultural pattern of India
More than 75% of people in India depend on agriculture for their livelihood. As per the 2010 FAO world agriculture statistics, India is the world’s largest producer of many fresh fruits, vegetables, milk, major spices, and many others. In eastern India, rice production is concentrated here.
India has some of the world’s best agricultural yields in its tea plantations mainly in Kerala state. Wheat production is widespread and in the drier northwestern sections of the country. Coconuts and rice dominate in the extreme south. But no single state is best in every crop.
Agricultural pattern of China
About 75% of China’s cultivated area is used for food crops. Rice is China’s most important crop, raised on about 25% of the cultivated area.
The majority of rice is grown in the south of the Huai river, in the Yangtze valley, the Zhujiang delta, and in Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan provinces.
Wheat mainly dominates in North China near the Wei and Fen River. Corn and millet are grown in north and northeast China. And oat is important in Inner Mongolia and Tibet.
Agricultural pattern of Japan
The intensive greenhouse fruit and vegetable production have tremendously increased in Japan. Improved imported dairy cattle and beef stock breeding animals are raising livestock quality.
Market gardens in Japan produce vegetables, fruit, and flowers in close proximity to all major urban markets. The country will generally remain self-sufficient in vegetables, pork, poultry, egg, and milk production in the future.
Mixed farming
Definition
Mixed farming is an agrarian system that mixes arable farming with the raising of livestock contemporaneously.
When one a firm along with crop production, some other agriculture-based practices like poultry, dairy farming, or beekeeping, etc. are adopted, and then this system of farming is known as mixed farming.
Characteristics of mixed farming
- The mixed farming is done for the sustenance of animals for own consumption or for commercial sale.
- In mixed farming, about 90% of land is devoted to agriculture.
- In mixed farming, crop rotation is followed in order to maintain soil fertility.
- This farming is more mechanized. The use of heavy machines like tractors, harrowers, threshers, etc. is very common.
- The degree of commercialization varies considerably. In west-central Europe, the northern United States & Argentina, mixed farming is highly commercialized while in other areas, commercialization is limited.
Location of mixed farming
The two extensive regions of mixed farming are in Eurasia & the United States. This activity takes up more land than any other types of agriculture in Europe and the East world in an ever-narrowing belt that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific with only one interruption in Eastern Siberia. This belt is thickest between Ukraine & central Finland.
In the United States, mixed farming is the second most extensive type of agriculture, covering a large part of the eastern half of the country.
Other regions of mixed farming are Mexico, South America & Southern Africa.
Description of mixed farming
In mixed farming, a farmer combines the cultivation of crops and the domestication of animals and gets income from both.
Mixed farming can, therefore, serve as a transition between the animal-raising economics and crop-raising ones.Mixed farmers are moderate in size and usually grow arable crops such as wheat, barley, oats, or rye.
Many farms grow some industrial crops such as sugar beet, hops, tobacco, or flax. Some part of the farm may be kept for beef or milk, and sheep for meat.
Pigs are also often kept, especially where dairying is practiced, they can be kept on skim milk and other leftovers from the farm. The overall objectives of mixed farming are to realize the optimal result from a combination of crop and livestock activities.
In a mixed farming system, crops and livestock activities compete for the same scarce resources such as land, labor, capital, and skill;
consequently, the production level of livestock is higher in mixed farming. However, general production of mixed farming is lower than in specialized farming.