The agricultural prowess of Punjab, well-known as the food basket of India, has played a major part in meeting growing demand in India and beyond. With the advent of the Green Revolution in the 1960s in North-West India, especially in Punjab, the trend toward relying solely on the cereal crops wheat and rice experienced a phenomenal acceleration. A vast diversity of other crops, indigenously cultivated in sustainable ways for many centuries, became marginalised. The repercussions of this shift soon became difficult to ignore, as Punjab’s booming economy gradually changed into a decelerating economy. The continuous decline of the ground water table was perhaps the first unheeded warning signal, as an environmental crisis related especially to rice agriculture. Other environmental impacts included soil erosion and declining fertility. Rising costs of chemical inputs and proprietary seeds meanwhile, led to a fall in farm profits that left small and marginal farmers desperate and drove many into suicide.
Diversification of crops has been proposed as one important way to tackle the growing food production problems in Punjab. Crop diversification has traditionally secured famer’s livelihoods, providing sustainable employment in rural areas, keeping input costs low, increasing resilience and assuring food security for India as a whole.
Ethnographic data for this study was gathered among farming community of the Mohali district in Punjab, and shows local farmers views on the economics of farming and the risks of a depleting environment. The research also compared still existing traditional and currently dominant modern cropping patterns in terms of their social and ecological outcomes. This presentation presents the results and examines the possibility of bringing about a change in the famers’ mindset to re-adopt a diversity of crops to address core concerns in contemporary Indian agriculture.
