Cultivative & Agriculture

Agriculture is the foundation of the Indian economy, contributing to about 60 percent of India’s population's livelihood. It has contributed about 14.5 percent of the country’s GDP for 2010-2011. For decades, Indian agricultural strategy has been based on self-sufficiency and self-reliance in food grain production. 

India has a total geographic area of around 328.73 million hectares, of which the reported area for land use is 306.04 million hectares. The net area cultivated in 2011-2012 is about 125.49 million hectares, or about 41 percent of the total reported area. Only around 30% of the entire cultivated land is irrigated, with the remainder being rain-fed. Sugarcane occupies 4.7 to 5.1 million hectares of cultivable land, making India the second-largest producer of sugarcane in the world after Brazil.