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farmers have no facility to do agriculture in a agriculture. It has only about fifth of its total area
mechanized way. They sill depend upon the under cultivation. American farming is mainly
traditional method of farming. Farmers are mainly commercial in nature and is very different from
poor and they depend upon bank or an agricultural Indian farming. The USA is not a very populous
cooperative society to take credit or loan to buy country but its size is far more than of India. As a
HYV seeds and implements. Farmers sell their result, most of the farms are large running into
product in the mandi located in the nearby town thousands of acres. The farmers do all functions
since they do not have proper storage facilities and related to cultivation using
they are forced to sell their agricultural produce machinery, right from
even when the market is not favourable to them sowing to reaping,
due to absence of proper storage facilities. threshing and storing and
Nowadays government is making efforts to develop produce. Due to lack of
storage houses but still more efforts are needed in manual work only 3%
this field. people in USA are engaged
Steps Taken by Indian Government in agriculture as compared US farmer
to 64% in India.
In recent years, agricultural development has taken
place in India. After independence, it became In USA, large extensive fields are found where an
India’s first priority under the Five Year Plans . average farm is much larger than an Indian farm.
Farmers were introduced to high yielding varieties As average farm size in the USA is about 250
of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides and hectare. The farmer generally resides in the farm.
simple machines. The government started the Crops are grown mainly for commercial purposes.
Intensive Agriculture Development Progamme Corn, soyabean, wheat, cotton and Sugar beat are
(IADP) in 1961 and it paved the way for the the major crops grown here. Farmers mainly use
adaption of Green Revolution in India. The modern tools and equipments and the whole
introduction of the Green Revolution has agriculture system is mechanized. Farmers are rich
contributed to increase in production of food and believe in scientific and planned farming as
grains. The production of food grains in 1967-68 they are educated and well aware about the
was 25% higher than that of 1966-67. modern methods of agriculture. They use chemical
fertilizers and pesticides wherever they are
Under Five-Year Plans , many multipurpose projects required. They use tractors, seed drills combined
and irrigation projects were launched to increase harvesters and threshers to perform various
the irrigation facilities. This helped to increase the agricultural operations. They store their farms
productivity as well. Various agricultural produce in the automated grains storage or
universities had also been set up across the dispatch to market agencies.
country. The effect of scientific advancement is
clearly visible in the fields of northern India Steps Taken by USA Government
especially in Punjab and Haryana. The government also helps in providing improved
The Green Revolution followed by the White facilities for storage, processing and transportation
Revolution has resulted in increased production of of farm products. The use of cold storage and
milk. Now India is one of the leading producers of refrigerators help in the safe delivery of many
milk in the world. perishable foods. As a result of all the above
measures the USA farmers produce so much surplus
Government has also taken many steps to develop food that the government is trying to limit the
storage facilities. Loans are made available to production of some crops and making efforts to
farmers through banks and cooperative societies on expand the export markets. The state governments
easy terms to invest in agriculture.
are also offering loans and subsidies to the farmers
USA to control the production of some crops such as
wheat, cotton, rice, tabacco, corn and dairy
The economy of the USA is not based on
Contemporary Social Science-8
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