The Indo-Gangetic Plains-named for the Indus and Ganges Rivers-is the breadbasket of the Indian subcontinent. This large swath of land, running from Pakistan across northern India and southern Nepal and into Bangladesh, is South Asia?s center of wheat and rice production. Since the mid-1990s, hundreds of thousands of farmers, nudged by stagnating crop yields, have adopted a new way of farming known as zero tillage. Zero tillage (see Chapter 8) is a cultivation practice that not only helps preserve soil fertility and conserves scarce water, but also boosts yields and increases farmers? profits by reducing their production costs. Instead of plowing their fields and then planting seeds, farmers who use zero tillage deposit seeds into holes drilled into the unplowed fields. An estimated 620,000 wheat farmers in northern India have adopted various forms of zero tillage on an estimated 1.76 million hectares of land under rice and wheat cultivation, with average income gains amounting to US$180-340 per household per year.

Socioeconomics Program

Text in English

INT2677