Agriculture | Economic Geography | CUET PG | Notes

Primary Crops

• Wheat, rice, and maize together form the backbone of global food security, collectively accounting for more than half of humanity’s total caloric intake either through direct consumption or as animal feed. Each crop has distinct climatic, soil, and topographic requirements, distinctive global and Indian distribution patterns, and occupies a specific place within the classification of world agricultural regions — making the comparative study of these three cereals a core theme in agricultural geography.

RICE (Oryza sativa)

• Rice is the staple food of more people than any other single crop on Earth, particularly across monsoon Asia, and is classified as a kharif (rainy season) crop in the Indian agricultural calendar.

Geographical Conditions Required:

• Rice is fundamentally a crop of the hot and humid tropical and subtropical regions, requiring high temperatures throughout its growth period, ideally between 20°C and 35°C, since the crop is highly sensitive to frost and cannot tolerate cold conditions at any growth stage. It demands abundant rainfall, generally above 100 cm annually, or, in regions of lower rainfall, assured irrigation, since rice is typically grown by transplanting seedlings into flooded (puddled) fields, requiring standing water for much of the growing season — a method that also suppresses weed growth and, notably, creates the anaerobic (waterlogged) soil conditions responsible for methane emissions from paddy cultivation.
• In terms of soil, rice grows best on fertile alluvial soils with good water retention capacity, particularly the clayey soils of river deltas and floodplains, since clay’s low permeability helps maintain the standing water layer required for puddled cultivation. Topographically, rice is traditionally associated with flat plains and level terraces, and in hilly and mountainous regions of Asia (notably the Philippines, Indonesia, and parts of the Himalayas), it is grown on elaborately engineered terraced hillslopes that convert steep terrain into a series of level, water-retaining steps.

Global Distribution:

• Rice cultivation is overwhelmingly concentrated in Asia, which accounts for the vast majority of both world rice area and production, reflecting the crop’s deep historical and cultural centrality to Asian diets and civilizations. The leading rice-producing countries globally are China and India, which together account for roughly half of world production, followed by Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Philippines.
• Notably, while both China and India are massive producers, a substantial share of production in both countries is consumed domestically given their enormous populations; Thailand, Vietnam, and India have historically been the world’s leading rice exporters, since Southeast Asia’s river deltas (the Mekong, Chao Phraya, and Irrawaddy deltas) produce substantial marketable surpluses.

Distribution in India:

• India is both a leading producer and (in most years) the world’s leading exporter of rice. Rice cultivation in India is concentrated in regions of high rainfall and abundant irrigation, particularly the eastern and southern states: West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Tamil Nadu are among the leading rice-producing states.
• West Bengal has traditionally led in absolute production, given its favourable deltaic conditions in the Ganga-Brahmaputra delta region, while Punjab and Haryana, despite being naturally less suited climatically (being drier, subtropical states), have become major rice producers through the Green Revolution’s expansion of canal and tube-well irrigation, though this has come at a significant environmental cost in terms of groundwater depletion, discussed in earlier themes.
• India’s rice cultivation is broadly divided into three cropping seasons: the dominant kharif (monsoon-sown) crop, harvested around October-November and accounting for the large majority of total output; the smaller rabi crop, grown under irrigation in eastern and southern India during the cooler winter months; and, in some southern regions, a summer crop as well.