Assistant Professor, Economics, VIT University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu
Online published on 21 November, 2013.
Agriculture plays an important role in the national economy of our country. It is the life blood of our economy. There happened structural transformation in the Indian economy. Even within the same sector, there is a change taken place. At the time of independence, the contribution of the Agriculture sector to our economy was very high. The importance of agriculture has been disvalued and at the same time, the cultivators for pray of money, selling the lands for some other activities.
There has been vast change taking place in the agriculture sector since 90’s. The globalization policy of the Government has brought many changes in the pattern of cultivation. The lands were once used for cultivating various agriculture crops like food grains and others food related crops are slowly loosing its importance and the same is used for the development of industrial and service sector activities.
Within agriculture sector itself, the lands were once used for cultivating food grains are now used for cultivating cash crops like tea, coffee and others.
The research has highlighted the problem relating to the transformation of agriculture sector particularly the transformation of lands once used for cultivating vegetables are slowly transferred to cultivate tea crops.
The researcher has taken up the issue to find out the reasons for shift in agriculture crop. He has taken up the Nilgiris district in Tamil Nadu as his study area. The Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu once named for cultivation of various vegetables. But the trend has changed. The cultivators have shifted their cultivation more towards tea in place of vegetables. The acreage of land used for vegetable cultivation has decreased and the acreage of land used for cultivation of tea has increased. The research has used secondary data for his study.
