Monoculture in India: Soil health, biodiversity, and sustainability perspectives

Abstract:

Monoculture in India refers to the widespread practice of growing a single crop, most notably rice and wheat over large areas, especially in states like Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. While it boosts short-term productivity, it has led to soil degradation, groundwater depletion, and economic vulnerability for farmers. India’s monoculture system has created short-term gains but long-term ecological and economic risks. Diversification into pulses, millets, and oilseeds supported by government policy, offers a sustainable path forward. Monoculture is more prefffered as comapred to polyculture or oligoculture in both commercial agriculture as well as natural farming practices/organic farming practices as it allows increased ease and efficiency in planting and harvesting. In today’s agriculture scenario, simple monocultures involving two or three cerreal crops are more prevailing all over the world and in India, as compared to poly culture. Panigrahi et al conducted a remote sensing survey of Indo-gangetic plains of India and reportted that rice was predominant crop covering 65.54 % followed by maize covering 11.26 % of total agricultural area of India whereas wheat covered 67.18 % of area in Rabi. Moreover, rice and /or wheat crops were components of 10 out of 13 cropping pattens identified. This is because agrotechniques developed so far, are in the form of package for intenisive crereal based crop sequences. Uniform management practices from field preparation to harvesting of crop, advent of high yielding varieties, broad range of pesticides, easily available and subsidised fertilizers and irrigation gave an edge to to monoculture over polyculture because in such favourable conditions monoculture proved to be more profitable as compared to polyculture.