Cropping Pattern refers to the proportion of land under cultivation of various crops at different points of your time. Imagine this scenario.
There is a piece of land with just two crops, one would be paddy and the other wheat. Both are equally lucrative in terms of income that they generate for someone who cultivates them.
If one is to analyze these two crops over a period of time, if they are following the same crop pattern it means that this farmer is continuously planting paddy and wheat in equal proportions over years and taking out their expected returns from these crops very year.
This indicates the time and arrangement of crops during a particular acreage. Changing cropping pattern would cause:
- Change within the proportion of land under different crops.
- Change in space sequence and time of crops.
The cropping pattern in India is mostly determined by the average rainfall, temperature, climate, technology, and the type of soil used for agriculture.
The different patterns of cropping are practiced in order to obtain the maximum yield. India has three cropping seasons:
1. Rabi: Rabi crops or rabi harvest are agricultural crops that are sown in winter and harvested in the spring in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The opposite of the rabi crop is the kharif crop which is grown after the rabi and zaid crops are harvested one after another respectively.
2. Kharif: Kharif crops, monsoon crops or autumn crops are domesticated plants that are cultivated and harvested in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh during the Indian subcontinent’s monsoon season, which lasts from June to November depending on the area.
3. Zaid: The main crops include traditional summer crops like rice, corn, cucumber, melon, pepper, tomato and some coarse cereals sown during the month of March and are generally harvested by June end.
