Chapter 16: Agriculture – IV: Cash Crops (2)
In Asita Park, on the Yamuna floodplain in Delhi, the walking tracks had a problem. Concrete was not allowed on a floodplain, so the paths were left bare — and every walker and cyclist raised a cloud of dust. The dust was a nuisance to users and it added to the city’s air pollution. The solution that was tried in 2025 came not from a cement plant but from a field in eastern India. The tracks were covered with a loosely knitted carpet of jute. It held the dust down at once. Then something better happened: grass began to push up through the gaps in the weave, and its roots tied the carpet to the ground more firmly than any peg could. A DDA official said the measure helped the environment and supported jute farmers at the same time. Notice what the carpet had to be able to do. It had to be strong enough to take the weight of a cyclist, open enough to let grass through, and willing to rot away into the soil rather than sit there for a century, the way a plastic sheet would. Very few materials can do all three. This chapter is about three plants — cotton, jute and tea — whose particular qualities are the reason we grow them, and about the exact conditions each one demands in return.
Diagram
Fig. 16.A1 Caption: The useful part of the jute plant is not the leaf or the seed but the inner bark of the tall stem. Brief: Simple labelled drawing of a single jute plant standing 2 to 4 metres tall against a human figure for scale, with a cut-away enlargement of the stem showing outer bark, the inner bark from which the fibre is drawn, and the fleshy woody core that is discarded; label the inner bark clearly as the source of the fibre.
16.1 Cotton
Cotton is a cash crop, which means it is grown mainly to be sold rather than eaten by the family that raises it. It supplies the raw material to the textile industry in India, so the mills of the country depend directly on what the cotton fields produce.
India ranks first in the world in cotton producing area and ranks second in world production of cotton. Read those two facts together and they say something important. Being first in area but second in output means India devotes more land to cotton than any other country, yet gets less from that land than the country above it. Much of the rest of this section explains why.
16.1.1 Climatic Conditions
Temperature
Cotton is a tropical crop, and in India it is raised as a kharif crop — a crop sown at the beginning of the south-west monsoon and harvested after it. Cotton requires uniformly high temperature during July to September, between 21°C and 30°C. The word ‘uniformly’ is doing real work here: the plant does not want a heat spike followed by a cold night, but a steady warmth held through the growing months.
During October the day temperature should be above 26°C. This warmth, together with clear sunny skies, helps the ripening and bursting of the cotton bolls — the rounded seed cases that split open to release the fibre. If the soil temperature falls below 20°C, root growth is reduced, and a plant whose roots have stopped growing cannot feed its bolls, so the whole plant is retarded.
A long growing-period of at least 200 frost-free days is also necessary for the plant to mature. That is close to seven months in which the temperature must never drop to freezing point. The cotton plant is extremely sensitive to frost, and a late spring frost or an early autumn frost can kill the plant and destroy the crop.
Rainfall
Rainfall should be moderate, ranging between 50 and 75 cm. Rainfall of more than 85 cm destroys the crop. Cotton is therefore a crop of the drier margins of the monsoon, not of the wet belts.
What makes cotton unusual is that it wants opposite weather at two different stages of its life. The plant needs sufficient rainfall in the early stages of growth, when it is building leaves and roots. After flowering, however, sunny and dry weather is required. Rainfall during the boll-opening and harvesting periods is harmful, because damp fibre in an open boll makes the plants vulnerable to pests and diseases.
16.1.2 Soil
Cotton grows well in well-drained clayey soils containing lime and phosphates. Drainage matters because a crop that hates rain at harvest also hates water standing around its roots. Since cotton crops exhaust the fertility of soils rapidly, regular application of manures and fertilisers to the soils is necessary — the field cannot simply be sown again the next year and left to recover on its own.
The soils on which cotton is raised in India are of three broad kinds. (a) The deep and medium black soils of the Deccan, the lava plateau that covers much of peninsular India, and of the Malwa Plateau in western Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, are considered ideal for cotton cultivation. (b) The alluvial soils of the Great Plains, the belt of river-laid soil stretching across northern India, carry the crop in fairly large measures. (c) The red and laterite soils of the Peninsular regions also raise cotton, though these are the poorer of the three in plant nutrients.
16.1.3 Methods Of Cultivation
Sowing
Some tillage and manuring is necessary before the crop is sown, so that the seed goes into loosened, fed soil. The seeds are sown either by the broadcast method, in which they are scattered by hand across the prepared field, or by drills, which place them in lines at a set depth. The duration of the crop season in India is 6 to 8 months.
Sowing is timed to the variety. In the case of the kharif long staple varieties, sowing is done mostly before the onset of the rains. For the short and medium staple varieties it is done later, up to September.
Once the plants are up, the field needs constant attention. The seedlings must be thinned out where necessary, so that the ones left standing are not competing for the same water and light. The ground must be regularly hoed and cleared of weeds, and the plants must be kept free of pests. Where irrigation is used, the fields are usually watered every ten to fourteen days.
Harvesting
The crop is harvested in October, when the cotton bolls ripen and burst into white, fluffy and shiny bolls of fibre. The bolls on a single plant do not all ripen together, so the crop is harvested in three to four pickings as the bolls mature. Yields decrease with successive pickings, because the later bolls are the smaller and poorer ones.
Processing
After harvesting, the cotton crop passes through a sequence of steps that separates the fibre from the seed and turns it into yarn. The chapter sets out four of them.
Once the cotton has been picked, either by machine or by hand, it is ginned. Ginning is the process used to separate the fibres, or lint, from the cotton seeds and from the short fibres or lints which adhere to them. A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates the cotton fibres from the seeds. This work used earlier to be done by hand.
The ginning process itself has several stages. The cotton first goes through dryers to reduce its moisture content, and then through cleaning equipment to remove foreign matter. It is then air conveyed to gin stands, where circular saws pull the lint through closely spaced ribs. The gaps between the ribs are narrow enough to let the fibre through while preventing the seed from passing. The lint is removed from the saw teeth by rotating brushes and is then compressed into bales.
The lint, or fibres, are then washed and combed to form a rope-like mass of fibres known as sliver. The sliver is fed to the spindles and spun to make cotton yarn. Meanwhile the seeds held back by the ribs are not wasted: they are crushed to yield oil, and the residue left after crushing is used as cattle fodder.
Flowchart
Fig. 16.A2 Caption: Ginning splits the picked crop into two streams, and neither of them is thrown away. Nodes: picked cotton → dryers reduce moisture → cleaning removes foreign matter → air conveyed to gin stands → circular saws pull lint through closely spaced ribs → ribs hold the seed back, so the stream divides here → lint branch: brushes remove lint from saw teeth → compressed into bales → washed → combed into sliver → fed to spindles → spun into cotton yarn; seed branch: seeds crushed → cotton seed oil + residue used as cattle fodder
Diagram
Fig. 16.1 Caption: Cotton plants. Brief: Photograph of a cotton field at picking time, with several bolls burst open into white fluffy fibre and one unopened green boll visible for contrast; label a burst boll and an unopened boll.
16.1.4 Varieties Of Cotton
In India, five main varieties of cotton are grown, classified on the basis of the length, strength and structure of the fibre. The length of the fibre is called the staple, and it is measured in millimetres — a difference of five millimetres in staple sounds trivial but decides whether the yarn spun from it will be fine or coarse.
The five varieties are as follows. (a) Superior long staple has a staple longer than 27 mm, and 33% of the total production in India comes from this variety. (b) Long staple has a staple length between 24.5 and 26 mm; it is long, fine and shiny, and is used for making fine and superior quality cloth. It is largely grown in Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. (c) Superior medium staple has a staple between 20 and 24 mm and contributes 37% of India’s output. Rajasthan, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra are its main producers. (d) Medium staple has a staple 20 to 21.5 mm long, and about 9 per cent of the total production comes from this group. (e) Short staple has a staple smaller than 19 mm. Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab are its main producers.
16.1.5 Distribution
Cotton occupies about 5 per cent of the total cropped area in India. The chief cotton-growing areas in the country are three. (a) The north-western Deccan, on the fertile Black Cotton Soils. (b) The central and southern Deccan of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. (c) The Upper Ganges valley, the stretch of the plain above the middle course of the river, where much of the cotton is grown with irrigation.
About 72 per cent of the total area and 60 per cent of the total production of cotton in the country are contributed by Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Those two figures are worth taking apart.
A value of 0.83 means these five states get about five parts of output for every six parts they would get at the national average — their land is producing less per hectare than cotton land elsewhere in India. The chapter points to one reason: in the Upper Ganges valley much of the cotton is grown with irrigation, and a field watered every ten to fourteen days is not at the mercy of a failed shower, while a rain-fed field on the Deccan is. It also explains the puzzle in the opening lines of this section — a country can be first in cotton area and only second in production if a large part of that area is worked without assured water.
That water is now becoming less reliable. There is a decline in global demand for cotton, coupled with erratic rainfall due to climate change. Together these have led to a decline in the sowing area, as farmers are opting for other crops. A crop that needs rain early, none at harvest, and no frost at either end has very little room to absorb a monsoon that arrives at the wrong time.
The following table sets the demands of cotton beside those of jute, the fibre crop taken up next, so that the two can be compared at a glance.
16.2 Jute
Jute is the most important fibre in India. It is obtained from the inner bark of two important species, Corchorus Capsularis, called white jute, and Corchorus Olitorius, called tossa jute. The jute plant grows to a height of 2 to 4 metres, which is roughly one to two storeys of a house, and the whole of that tall stem is grown for a layer of bark. The fibre in the inner bark is soft and strong, and can be drawn out into yarn of good lengths.
The Two Species
The two species do not want the same ground, and that decides how much of India’s jute land each one occupies. (a) White jute accounts for 75 per cent of the total area under jute in India. It is hardy and highly adaptable, and grows well on both lowlands and uplands. (b) Tossa jute is grown only on uplands, as it is averse to flooding, and occupies about 25 per cent of the total jute area in the country. It is used for manufacturing rough quality cloth, sacks and other packing material.
What Jute Is Used For
Jute is considered a bio-degradable, environment friendly alternative to plastic bags — ‘bio-degradable’ meaning that living organisms in the soil break it down, so it does not remain in the ground as plastic does. It is used in the making of many utility products like rugs, twine, upholstery and tarpaulins. It is also used in the production of paper, pulp and textiles. Jute is referred to as the ‘golden fibre’, as it provides huge revenue to the government.
Mesta is an inferior substitute for jute. Its fibre is more coarse and not as strong as jute fibre, so bags for rough use are made from it. Its real advantage is that it can withstand drought conditions. It is therefore grown where jute cannot be grown, and mesta cultivation is undertaken in some parts of Assam, Bihar, Odisha and Kerala.
Map
Map 16.1 Caption: Cotton and jute producing areas. Brief: Political outline map of India at 1:24 000 000 showing the full extent of India as officially defined, with state boundaries, the Tropic of Cancer, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, the Andaman Sea, the Lakshadweep Sea and the Indian Ocean labelled; shade cotton areas in one colour and jute areas in another, with a two-item key; no crop figures or state names to be printed on the map.
16.2.1 Climatic Conditions
Temperature
Jute requires a hot and humid climate, with temperatures between 24°C and 35°C and relative humidity of 90 per cent. Relative humidity is the amount of water vapour in the air compared with the most the air could hold at that temperature, so 90 per cent means air that is very nearly saturated. Air that damp keeps the tall stem growing and stops it drying and hardening early.
Rainfall
The annual rainfall should be more than 150 cm. How that rain is spread through the year matters as much as the total. About 2.5 cm to 7.5 cm of rain distributed in a month during the sowing period is sufficient, and occasional showers varying from 2 to 3 cm at intervals of about a week are most beneficial for the crop. Incessant and untimely rains and prolonged droughts are both harmful.
16.2.2 Soil
Jute grows best on soil enriched by new alluvium, the fresh silt and fine sand that a river spreads over its floodplain when it overflows its banks. Each inundation lays down a new supply of plant food, which is why the crop returns to the same land year after year without exhausting it.
Loam is a soil that mixes sand, silt and clay in balanced proportions, and loamy soils are the most suitable for jute production. The reason lies in the clay: the clay particles of loam help to hold the plant nutrients, preventing them from getting washed away by water. The type of soil also decides the quality of the fibre, since clayey soil gives the heaviest yield while sandy soils produce coarse fibre.
16.2.3 Methods Of Cultivation
Sowing
The fields for growing jute have to be thoroughly prepared before the crop is sown. Sowing takes place in February on lowlands and from March to June on uplands. The seeds are sown by drilling or by broadcasting.
Harvesting
The crop is harvested from July to September, about 8 to 10 months after sowing. Relatively higher yields are obtained from the crop sown during the winter season. A delay in harvest also adds to yields, but usually produces coarse fibre — so the farmer is choosing between quantity and quality every time the harvest is put off.
Processing
Jute can be harvested after 100 to 150 days of sowing, and the exact moment decides what comes out of the field. The crop harvested around the flowering stage gives the best quality fibre but low yields, while older crops give high yields of low quality fibre.
The crop is harvested by hand, by pulling up the stem. It is dried and stripped of unwanted leaves, then put in water and allowed to rot. This process is known as retting. It was once done by submerging the jute into ponds and streams, but is now done in special tanks. Best results are obtained when retting is done in slow moving clean water. Retting softens the outer bark and so facilitates the easy extraction of the fibre within.
Chemical additives help in the retting operation. The fleshy part of the stem is eventually decomposed, and the fibres are then scraped to remove any remaining pieces of the soft vegetable matter. After drying, the fibres are loosely spun and woven, and are used in making sacks and bags, carpet and upholstery.
Flowchart
Fig. 16.A3 Caption: Every step from the standing plant to the sack is a way of getting at one layer of bark. Nodes: jute plant pulled up by hand → dried → leaves stripped off → submerged in slow moving clean water → retting, helped by chemical additives → outer bark softens and fleshy stem decomposes → fibre scraped clean of vegetable matter → dried → loosely spun → woven → sacks, bags, carpet, upholstery
Diagram
Fig. 16.3 Caption: Jute processing. Brief: Four photographs in a row, captioned in order — soaking the jute, extracting the fibre, tying fibres into bundles, drying the bundles; keep the water level visible in the first two so the retting stage is clear.
16.2.4 Distribution
West Bengal occupies the first place both in respect of the area, at 74.2%, and of production, at 80.29%, of jute in India. Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Tripura account for most of the remaining jute produced in the country. Set those two percentages side by side and they say something the pie chart alone does not.
A value above 1 means West Bengal’s jute land is producing more per hectare than jute land elsewhere in India — the opposite of what the same arithmetic showed for the cotton states. The explanation lies in this section’s own account of the delta: hot damp climate, more than 150 cm of rain, and fresh alluvium delivered by the floods. Where a crop’s ideal conditions and its leading state coincide this closely, yield rises above the national figure rather than dragging it down.
The Leading States
In West Bengal, the jute crop is grown in Murshidabad, Dinajpur, Hooghly, 24 Parganas, Nadia, Jalpaiguri, Malda and Burdwan. It is grown on both the old and the new alluvial soils, which have been deposited by the Ganga and the Brahmaputra during floods in the delta. The hot damp climate and the alluvial, loamy soils together provide excellent conditions for the growth of jute in the Ganga-Brahmaputra delta, the vast low plain where both rivers break into distributaries before reaching the Bay of Bengal.
The other producing states follow the same rule — jute stays close to rivers that flood. (a) In Assam, cultivation of jute is concentrated along the Brahmaputra and Surma river valleys, in the districts of Goalpara, Tezpur, Kamrup, Darrang, Nowgong and Sibsagar. (b) In Bihar, major production comes from the Purnea, Saharsa and Darbhanga districts. (c) In Odisha, jute is raised in the Cuttack, Puri and Bolangir districts. (d) In Uttar Pradesh, Kheri, Sitapur and Bahraich are the important producers.
Graph
Fig. 16.2 Caption: Jute production in India, by share of the national total. Brief: Pie chart with four segments — West Bengal 80.29%, Bihar 11.58%, Assam 7.22%, Others 0.91% — each labelled with its state name and percentage, and the segments drawn in proportion.
Read the chart carefully before drawing conclusions from it. It divides the national total into shares, so it shows how production is split between states and nothing else. It does not give the tonnage any state produced, it does not say in which year, and it hides everything below the state line — the districts named above do not appear, and a state’s share tells you nothing about which of its districts carries that share.
16.3 Tea
Tea is an important beverage, liked by both the aristocrats and the common man. This is because of its unique taste and certain inherent qualities as a tranquilliser and a mild stimulant — that is, it calms and lifts at the same time, which is a rare combination in a drink.
How Tea Came To India
A Japanese folklore states that tea was discovered by an Indian Buddhist Monk who visited China in about AD 500. However, it was Major Robert Bruce who discovered in 1823 that indigenous tea bushes grew wild on the hillsides of Upper Assam, the eastern end of the Brahmaputra valley. That single observation matters: the plant was not brought to those hills, it was already living there, which tells us the conditions it wants were present in Assam before anyone planted a garden.
Commercial planting of tea began around 1840, when tea seeds were imported from China and planted on the plains of North-East India, in Assam and Darjeeling. Gradually tea plantation, which was largely confined to Upper Assam, began to spread to other parts of India, and new areas were opened up to tea.
Prominent among these new areas are the Duars and the Terai in North Bengal, both strips of land at the foot of the eastern Himalayas, and the foothills of Uttarakhand in the Himalayas, around Garhwal and Kumaon. Europeans established tea gardens in the Nilgiris, the hills of the Western Ghats in South India. Every one of these places is a slope at the foot of or inside a mountain range, and the reason for that will become clear in the sections that follow.
16.3.1 Climatic Conditions
Temperature
Tea is a shade loving plant and develops more vigorously under light shade, which is why gardens are planted beneath taller trees rather than in the open. The ideal maximum monthly temperature is 24°C to 30°C. When the maximum temperature in shade falls below 24°C, or the minimum temperature falls below 18°C, the growth of the bush is retarded.
The plant is unusual in wanting damp air rather than merely warm air. High humidity, heavy dew and morning fog are good for the rapid development of young leaves, and it is the young leaves that are picked and sold.
Rainfall
The tea plants grow well in a humid climate, and cannot stand long spells of dry weather at any time of the year. Note the phrase ‘at any time’ — for tea there is no season in which a drought is acceptable, unlike cotton, which needs a dry spell at harvest.
Tea must have abundant rainfall, at least 150 cm, well distributed throughout the year. The actual totals in the growing areas run far above that minimum. (a) In the Assam tea areas, the annual rainfall averages between 125 cm and 375 cm. (b) In the Duars and Darjeeling districts, it ranges from 250 cm to 500 cm. (c) The tea areas in the south receive still heavier rainfall.
16.3.2 Soil
The tea plant requires well drained, deep friable loams, or forest land rich in organic matter. ‘Friable’ means the soil crumbles easily between the fingers instead of holding together in a lump, so air and roots can move through it. The soil must be deep and have a moderately open texture, and it should be gently rolled so as to prevent waterlogging.
Waterlogging is harmful for the growth of tea bushes, and avoiding it is the reason tea is grown on hill slopes rather than on level ground. Water that would sit around the roots on a plain runs off a slope instead.
Virgin forest soils containing a good amount of iron and humus are the best ones for tea. Humus is the dark, decayed remains of leaves and other plant matter, and it both feeds the soil and helps it hold moisture. Nitrogenous fertilisers like ammonium sulphate increase the yield.
16.3.3 Methods Of Cultivation
Tea gardens are laid out on cleared hill slopes, under the shade of trees raised in advance — the shade trees must be standing before the tea goes in, since a shade loving plant cannot be asked to wait. Belts of trees like silver oak are also raised on the borders to serve as wind barriers, breaking the force of the wind before it reaches the bushes and dries them out.
Tea is cultivated in two ways. (a) From seeds: tea plants can be raised from tea seeds, with high quality seeds sown in well prepared nurseries. The saplings are transplanted within a year into the proposed tea gardens, at a distance of one metre on all four sides. (b) From cuttings: tea shrubs can also be grown in nurseries from cuttings of high yielding varieties, a method known as clonal planting. When the saplings are 20 cm high they are transplanted into the tea garden.
Clonal planting ensures high quality and better yield, because the new plant has all the qualities of the mother plant from which the cutting was taken. A seed mixes the qualities of two parents and may or may not carry the ones the planter wants; a cutting is a piece of the parent itself, so nothing is left to chance.
Tea gardens are set up on hill slopes for two reasons taken together. The high altitude provides the required climatic conditions, and the slopes protect the crop from annual inundations and from stagnant water during the rains.
Diagram
Fig. 16.4 Caption: A tea plantation. Brief: Photograph of a tea garden on a hill slope, with pickers working among waist-high bushes and taller shade trees visible behind; the slope of the ground should be clearly readable in the frame.
16.3.4 Harvesting
Plucking Of Leaves
Pruning, the cutting back of the bush, starts after two years, in order to maintain the height and diameter of the plant limited to one metre. A bush kept at that height can be picked by hand by a person standing beside it, and frequent pruning also encourages the rapid production of fresh leaves and shoots. In India, picking is much more frequent than elsewhere.
How often a garden is picked depends on how fast the leaves grow back, and that in turn depends on height above sea level. (a) At lower elevations, tea is picked every ten days during the growing season. (b) At higher altitudes, where growth is slower in the cooler air, it is picked every fifteen days.
Picking goes on all the time during the south-west monsoon season, from early April to mid-November. On an average there are between sixteen and twenty pickings a year.
The arithmetic shows that the printed figure is not an arbitrary number — it follows from the length of the season and the speed at which leaves regrow, and the speed of regrowth follows from altitude and temperature. It also shows what the tea industry demands of the people who work in it. A crop picked twenty times a year needs the same workforce present in the garden for eight months together, unlike a crop harvested once.
The tea shrub continues to be productive for about 50 years, after which restocking is necessary — the whole garden must be replanted and then waited on again.
Tea-picking is a skilful job, requiring patience and judgement, because the picker decides plant by plant which shoots are ready. It is usually done by women, who are better pickers and who are employed at relatively cheaper rates. Two tender leaves and a bud or shoot, known as fine plucking, are usually plucked from each stem.
Processing
There are four types of tea, and each one is processed differently. What separates them is chiefly how much the leaf is allowed to ferment before drying.
Flowchart
Fig. 16.A5 Caption: Fermentation is the fork in the road — how far the leaf is allowed to ferment decides which of the four teas comes out. Nodes: picked leaves → how much fermentation? → fully fermented → black tea, taken with milk and sugar in India; → not fermented at all → green tea, taken without milk or sugar, consumed in China and the Far East; → partially fermented → oolong tea, greenish-brown, much of it shipped to the United States; → inferior and coarser leaves, stems and tea-dust set aside → compressed into rectangular blocks → brick tea, consumed in Russia and Tibet
16.3.4.1 Black Tea
The Crush-Tear-Curl method, usually shortened to CTC, is used for black tea. It works by drying the leaves, crushing them in a machine and fermenting them. This is the tea taken with milk and sugar in India.
In processing black tea the following steps are taken. (a) Withering: the gathered leaves are first withered or dried in the sun for a day or two to extract moisture. (b) Rolling: they are then rolled mechanically between steel rollers to break up the fibres, and the leaves are dried again or baked lightly over charcoal fires until they become reddish brown in colour. (c) Fermentation: the leaves are allowed to ferment, which reduces the amount of tannic acid in the tea by half but does not impair its flavour. (d) Drying: further fermentation is checked by roasting and drying the leaves over a fire or in an oven until they are black in colour. (e) Blending: expert blenders and tea-tasters blend the various grades of tea to give it a special aroma and to make many proprietary brands.
Flowchart
Fig. 16.A4 Caption: Each step in making black tea does one thing to the leaf, and drying is what stops the process at the right point. Nodes: gathered leaves → withering, one to two days in the sun, moisture removed → rolling between steel rollers, fibres broken up → baked lightly over charcoal fires, leaves turn reddish brown → fermentation, tannic acid halved, flavour kept → drying by roasting or in an oven, leaves turn black, fermentation checked → blending of grades by tea-tasters → proprietary brands
16.3.4.2 Green Tea
Green tea is not dried in the sun but in ovens, after the leaves are steamed in large vats and crushed in machines. It is not fermented at all. This variety of tea is consumed in China and the Far East.
In the preparation of green tea, the picked leaves are heated immediately by roasting them over hot iron pans, and are later rolled. Because the leaves are heated at once, there is no fermentation process, and they remain green even when they are dried, graded and packed.
Green teas are highly flavoured, and they are stronger stimulants because of their higher tannin or tannic acid content — which is exactly what black tea loses half of during fermentation. They are usually taken without milk or sugar, after brewing with boiling water.
16.3.4.3 Oolong Tea
This variety of tea is greenish-brown, and is prepared by partially drying and fermenting the leaves. It therefore sits between the other two in both colour and treatment. From the tea gardens, a high grade semi-fermented Oolong Tea is produced, and much of it is shipped to the United States.
16.3.4.4 Brick Tea
In this variety, the inferior and coarser leaves, the stems and the tea-dust are compressed into rectangular blocks of brick tea. It is the one type made from what the other three leave behind. Such tea is normally consumed in Russia and Tibet.
16.3.5 Distribution
India has the world’s largest area under tea, and it produces 28.3 per cent of the world production. At present, India is the fourth largest exporter of tea, after Kenya, China and Sri Lanka. Producing the most and exporting the fourth most are not a contradiction: a large part of what India grows is drunk within India.
The producing states are as follows. (a) Assam is the largest producer of tea, contributing 53.2 per cent of the total area and 51% of the tea produced in India, and it produces about 1/6th of the tea produced in the world. In Assam there are two main areas of tea production, the Brahmaputra valley and the Surma valley. (b) West Bengal is the second largest producer in the country, where tea is grown in the Duars and the Darjeeling Hills. (c) Tamil Nadu accounts for 15.90 per cent of the total production of tea in the country. The Nilgiris district is the foremost producer, and other producers include Coimbatore, Kanyakumari and Madurai. (d) Kerala is the fourth largest producer of tea in India. The important producers include the Kottayam, Kollam, Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur, Palakkad, Kozhikode and Kannur districts. (e) Other minor producers of tea include Ratnagiri and Satara in Maharashtra, Purnea in Bihar, Hazaribagh and Ranchi in Jharkhand, the Almora and Garhwal districts of Uttarakhand, the Kangra Valley in Himachal Pradesh, Mysore, Coorg and Shimoga in Karnataka, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh.
Map
Map 16.2 Caption: Tea and coffee producing areas. Brief: Political outline map of India at 1:24 000 000 showing the full extent of India as officially defined, with state boundaries, the Tropic of Cancer, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, the Andaman Sea, the Lakshadweep Sea and the Indian Ocean labelled; shade the tea producing areas with a single-item key; no production figures or district names to be printed on the map.
The following table brings together the conditions and the leading areas for tea, and sets beside it the same information for coffee.
16.4 Summary
- Cotton is a cash crop that supplies raw material to the textile industry in India. India ranks first in cotton producing area and second in world production.
- Cotton demands a narrow set of conditions, and it wants opposite weather at two stages of its life.
- It is a kharif crop needing 21°C to 30°C from July to September, day temperatures above 26°C in October, and at least 200 frost-free days.
- Rainfall must be moderate, 50 to 75 cm; more than 85 cm destroys the crop.
- Rain is needed early in growth, but sunny dry weather is needed after flowering, since rain at boll-opening invites pests and diseases.
- Cotton grows on well-drained clayey soils containing lime and phosphates, and exhausts soil fertility rapidly, so manures and fertilisers must be applied regularly.
- The deep and medium black soils of the Deccan and Malwa Plateaus and Gujarat are ideal.
- The alluvial soils of the Great Plains and the red and laterite soils of the Peninsular regions also carry the crop.
- Cotton is sown by broadcasting or by drills, the crop season runs 6 to 8 months, and it is harvested in October in three to four pickings, with yields falling at each successive picking.
- After picking, the crop is ginned, which separates the lint from the seed, and both streams are used.
- The lint is washed, combed into sliver, and spun on spindles into cotton yarn.
- The seeds are crushed for oil, and the residue is used as cattle fodder.
- Five varieties are grown, classified by the length, strength and structure of the fibre — superior long staple above 27 mm giving 33% of production, long staple at 24.5 to 26 mm, superior medium staple at 20 to 24 mm giving 37% of output, medium staple at 20 to 21.5 mm giving about 9 per cent, and short staple below 19 mm.
- Cotton occupies about 5 per cent of India’s total cropped area, and is grown chiefly in the north-western Deccan, the central and southern Deccan, and the Upper Ganges valley, where much of it is irrigated.
- Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka give about 72 per cent of the area but only about 60 per cent of the production, and sowing area is now declining as global demand falls and rainfall becomes erratic.
- Jute is the most important fibre in India, drawn from the inner bark of two species of a plant 2 to 4 metres tall.
- White jute takes 75 per cent of the jute area and grows on both lowlands and uplands.
- Tossa jute takes about 25 per cent, is grown only on uplands as it is averse to flooding, and yields rough cloth, sacks and packing material.
- Jute is a bio-degradable alternative to plastic, used for rugs, twine, upholstery, tarpaulins, paper, pulp and textiles, and is called the ‘golden fibre’ for the revenue it brings the government. Mesta, a coarser and weaker substitute, withstands drought and is grown in parts of Assam, Bihar, Odisha and Kerala where jute cannot grow.
- Jute needs a hot humid climate of 24°C to 35°C with 90 per cent relative humidity, more than 150 cm of rain, and soil enriched by new alluvium; loam holds the nutrients, clayey soil gives the heaviest yield and sandy soil gives coarse fibre.
- Jute is sown in February on lowlands and March to June on uplands, harvested by hand from July to September, and then retted — rotted in slow moving clean water so that the bark softens and the fibre can be scraped out and dried.
- West Bengal leads in both area, at 74.2%, and production, at 80.29%, with the crop concentrated in the Ganga-Brahmaputra delta, followed by Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Tripura.
- Tea is a beverage valued as a tranquilliser and mild stimulant. Indigenous bushes were found growing wild in Upper Assam in 1823, and commercial planting began around 1840 before spreading to the Duars, the Terai, the Himalayan foothills and the Nilgiris.
- Tea is a shade loving plant needing 24°C to 30°C, high humidity, dew and fog, and at least 150 cm of rain well distributed through the year, since it cannot stand a dry spell at any time.
- Tea requires deep, well drained, friable forest loams rich in humus and iron, and is grown on hill slopes because slopes drain away the water the bush cannot tolerate.
- Gardens are laid out under shade trees with wind barriers, and are raised either from seeds or from cuttings by clonal planting, which reproduces the qualities of the mother plant exactly.
- Bushes are pruned from the second year to a height of one metre, picked every ten to fifteen days depending on elevation, giving sixteen to twenty pickings a year by fine plucking of two leaves and a bud, and stay productive for about 50 years.
- Four types of tea are made, differing in how far the leaf is fermented.
- Black tea is fully fermented by the CTC method, through withering, rolling, fermentation, drying and blending.
- Green tea is not fermented, is higher in tannin and is drunk without milk or sugar.
- Oolong tea is partially fermented and greenish-brown.
- Brick tea is made by compressing inferior leaves, stems and tea-dust into blocks.
- India has the world’s largest area under tea and produces 28.3 per cent of world production, while ranking fourth as an exporter; Assam leads with 53.2 per cent of the area and 51% of production, followed by West Bengal, Tamil Nadu at 15.90 per cent, and Kerala.
Flowchart
Fig. 16.A6 Caption: For each of the three crops, one condition sets where it can grow and one step turns the plant into a product. Nodes: cash crops in this chapter → cotton branch: moderate rain of 50 to 75 cm and deep black soil → picked in October → ginning separates lint from seed → yarn for the textile industry, plus seed oil and cattle fodder; → jute branch: more than 150 cm of rain and new alluvium from flooding → pulled up by hand → retting rots the bark in slow moving water → fibre for sacks, bags, carpet and upholstery; → tea branch: rain in every month and a draining hill slope → fine plucking, sixteen to twenty times a year → fermentation, taken to a different point each time → black, green, oolong or brick tea
What This Chapter Cannot Tell You
The figures in this chapter are shares and ranges, not amounts. A state’s percentage of production says nothing about the tonnes behind it, and a rainfall range of 125 cm to 375 cm covers gardens whose growing conditions are not remotely alike.
Every distribution figure here is drawn at the level of the state, so it smooths over everything smaller. Assam’s 51% hides the difference between the Brahmaputra valley and the Surma valley, and West Bengal’s 80.29% tells us nothing about which of its eight named districts carries that share.
The chapter also gives no year for most of its data, and the crops are not standing still. It records that cotton sowing area is declining as demand falls and rainfall grows erratic, but it cannot tell us how far that decline has since gone, or whether the other two crops are moving the same way. ## 16.5 Check Your Concepts
- Using Table 16.1, answer the following.
- State two ways in which the growing conditions of cotton differ from those of jute.
- Name the crop that would suffer more in a year of unusually heavy rain, and give a reason from the table.
- Arrange the five steps in the making of black tea in the order in which they occur, and state in one sentence what each step does to the leaf.
- Fig. 16.2 gives West Bengal 80.29% of India’s jute production, while the chapter gives it 74.2% of the area under jute. Compare the two figures and explain what they tell you about the yield of jute land in West Bengal. Support your answer with one condition described in the chapter.
- The chapter states that annual rainfall in the Assam tea areas averages between 125 cm and 375 cm. Explain why a range this wide makes it difficult to say what rainfall any one tea garden in Assam actually receives.
- How is frost harmful for the growth of the cotton plant? Why is dry weather necessary at the time of harvesting cotton?
- In what way is the Ganga-Brahmaputra delta suitable for jute cultivation?
- Name the leading producer of tea in India. State two factors that have helped it to become the leading state in tea production.
16.6 Case-Based Questions
- Fig. 16.A2 shows the processes involved in ginning. Describe the process in your own words.
- Akola is known as the ‘Cotton City of India’ because of its high cotton production. Shyamlal, a cotton farmer from the district, does not want his son to follow his vocation, and wants him to find employment in Pune instead. What are the problems associated with the growing of cotton that are influencing Shyamlal?
- Why is jute retted?
- Describe briefly the retting of jute with the help of Fig. 16.3.