Grade 10 Geography Chapter 4: Agriculture

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms, farming types, major crops, and agricultural reforms from Grade 10 Geography Chapter 4: Agriculture.

Indian Agriculture

A primary economic activity that engages two-thirds of India's population, produces the majority of consumed food, supplies raw materials for various industries, and provides export goods such as tea, coffee, and spices.

Primitive Subsistence Farming

A type of farming practiced on small patches of land using family or community labour and primitive tools such as the hoe, dao, and digging sticks, depending entirely on the monsoon, natural soil fertility, and environmental conditions.

Intensive Subsistence Farming

A labour-intensive farming system practiced on small, uneconomical landholdings resulting from land division, where high doses of biochemical inputs and irrigation are applied to extract maximum output.

Slash and Burn Agriculture

A form of shifting cultivation where farmers clear a patch of land to produce food crops to sustain their family, moving to a fresh patch once soil fertility declines so natural processes can replenish the abandoned soil.

Plantation Agriculture

A capital-intensive form of commercial farming that uses migrant labour to grow a single crop over a large area, functioning at the interface of agriculture and industry by supplying raw materials.

Rabi Crop Success Factors

Key factors facilitating winter crops (such as wheat), specifically winter precipitation brought by western temperate cyclones and the adoption of the Green Revolution in Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, and parts of Rajasthan.

Rice

The primary staple food crop in India; a kharif crop requiring high temperatures (above $25\text{ degree Celsius}$), high humidity, and annual rainfall exceeding $100\text{ cm}$, grown mainly in northern plains, coastal belts, and deltaic areas.

Tea

An important plantation beverage crop introduced to India by the British that thrives in tropical and subtropical climates with deep, well-drained, humus-rich soil, requiring a warm, moist, frost-free climate year-round and abundant cheap skilled labour.

Institutional Reforms in Indian Agriculture

Post-Independence government measures focused on collectivisation, consolidation of land holdings, cooperation, and the abolition of the zamindari system to modernize agriculture.

Comprehensive Land Development Programme

A package of institutional and technical reforms initiated in the 1980s and 1990s providing crop insurance against natural disasters, establishing Grameen banks and cooperative societies for low-interest loans, and offering schemes like KCC and PAIS.

Minimum Support Price (MSP)

Pre-announced remunerative and procurement crop prices set by the government to protect farmers from exploitation by middlemen and market speculators.

Jute

A natural crop known as the golden fibre that grows on well-drained, fertile flood plain soils renewed each year under high temperatures, commonly used to manufacture gunny bags, ropes, mats, yarn, and carpets.

Cotton

A kharif crop native to India that grows in the drier parts of the black cotton soil of the Deccan plateau, requiring high temperature, light rainfall or irrigation, bright sunshine, $210$ frost-free days, and $6$ to $8\text{ months}$ to reach maturity.

White Revolution (Operation Flood)

A major developmental strategy initiated in India aimed at modernizing and significantly improving agricultural output and dairy production.