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    Crop Diversification Is A Concept Which Is Opposite To Crop Specializa

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    Muhammad Chaudhry
    Crop diversification involves farmers growing multiple crops on their land in a year rather than specializing in one crop. The level of diversification depends on geographic, climatic, socioeconomic, and technological factors in a region. Poor and subsistence farmers tend to diversify more to mitigate risks from unpredictable weather and to meet family needs. Diversification also improves soil fertility by varying crops and provides employment throughout the year. Measuring diversification looks at the number of crops grown and the percentage of land occupied by each. Higher numbers of crops occupying around 10% of land each indicates very high diversification, while one crop occupying all land shows high specialization.

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    Crop Diversification Is A Concept Which Is Opposite To Crop Specializa

    Uploaded by

    Muhammad Chaudhry
    114 views2 pages
    Crop diversification involves farmers growing multiple crops on their land in a year rather than specializing in one crop. The level of diversification depends on geographic, climatic, socioeconomic, and technological factors in a region. Poor and subsistence farmers tend to diversify more to mitigate risks from unpredictable weather and to meet family needs. Diversification also improves soil fertility by varying crops and provides employment throughout the year. Measuring diversification looks at the number of crops grown and the percentage of land occupied by each. Higher numbers of crops occupying around 10% of land each indicates very high diversification, while one crop occupying all land shows high specialization.

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    Crop Diversification is a Concept Which is Opposite to Crop Specializa

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    Crop diversification involves farmers growing multiple crops on their land in a year rather than specializing in one crop. The level of diversification depends on geographic, climatic, socioeconomic, and technological factors in a region. Poor and subsistence farmers tend to diversify more to mitigate risks from unpredictable weather and to meet family needs. Diversification also improves soil fertility by varying crops and provides employment throughout the year. Measuring diversification looks at the number of crops grown and the percentage of land occupied by each. Higher numbers of crops occupying around 10% of land each indicates very high diversification, while one crop occupying all land shows high specialization.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    114 views2 pages

    Crop Diversification Is A Concept Which Is Opposite To Crop Specializa

    Uploaded by

    Muhammad Chaudhry
    Crop diversification involves farmers growing multiple crops on their land in a year rather than specializing in one crop. The level of diversification depends on geographic, climatic, socioeconomic, and technological factors in a region. Poor and subsistence farmers tend to diversify more to mitigate risks from unpredictable weather and to meet family needs. Diversification also improves soil fertility by varying crops and provides employment throughout the year. Measuring diversification looks at the number of crops grown and the percentage of land occupied by each. Higher numbers of crops occupying around 10% of land each indicates very high diversification, while one crop occupying all land shows high specialization.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
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    Crop diversification is a concept which is opposite to crop specialization.

    The
    farmers all over the world, especially in the developing countries, try to grow several
    crops in their holdings in an agricultural year.

    The level of crop diversification largely depends on the geo-climatic/socioeconomic


    conditions and technological development in a region. In general, higher the level of
    agricultural technology, lesser the degree of diversification. Moreover, the rich
    farmers prefer to specialize in agricultural enterprise while the poor and subsisted
    farmers are generally more interested in the diversification of crops.

    The main causes for the crop diversification may be as under:


    (1) The uncertain weather, especially the erratic rainfall. In the areas where the
    variability of rainfall is high and adequate sources of irrigation are not available,
    farmers grow several crops in a season, requiring different quantities of moisture. It
    is being done mainly to get something from their fields even in the case of extreme
    weather (drought or deluge) conditions.

    (2) In the tradition bound subsistent farming systems the farmers grow several crops
    to meet the family requirements. In such areas one may find a high degree of crops
    diversification.

    (3) Diversification has usually been done by the farmers to enhance nitrogen in the
    soil and to replenish the soil fertility. It has been established by the agricultural
    scientists that crop specialization and monoculture for several years lead to soil
    depletion. In other words crop diversification increases the sustainability of arable
    land.

    (4) The diversification of crops also generates more employment as the farmers and
    agricultural workers remain busy in the sowing, weeding, harvesting and marketing
    of different crops throughout the year.
    (5) Diversification of crops also enables the farmers to provide a reasonable quantity
    of the costly inputs to their crops as different crops need different quantities of inputs
    (chemical fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides and irrigation). In the case of crop
    specialization the inputs are required at a specific time and many of the farmers may
    not be in a position to provide the required inputs at the appropriate time owing to
    their high cost.

    Looking at the importance of crop diversification many geographers have developed


    techniques for the measurement of crop diversification and crop specialization. In
    general, it is assumed that if the lumber of crops grown in a component areal unit is
    large (say about 10), each crop occupying about 10 per cent of the cropped area, it
    would mean that the crop diversification is of a very high degree. Contrary to this, if
    a crop occupies 100 per cent of the gross cropped area, the diversification is least
    and it will be a case of high degree of crop specialization.

    For the measurement of crop diversification, Bhatia (1965) developed a


    formula based on the gross cropped area. The formula has been expressed
    as:
    Index of Crop Diversification =

    Percent of sown area under x crops /Number of x crops

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