A nationwide major policy shift that involved changing from traditional multi-crop to mono-crop cultivation may be one of the noteworthy causes of the production increases ( Swaminathan, 2010).Currently,rice, wheat and plantation crops are the major crops grown across the country. During the past five decades up
to the present,while these three crops have shown consistent
positive growth in terms of area of cultivation, production and
yield, traditional coarse cereals and pulses continue to perform
very poorly(Bhalla andSingh,2009).
India has also started witnessing other negative consequences
of the new agriculture paradigm. Overexploitation of water,soil
salinity due to improper and excessive use of water, erosion of
soil nutrients, growing pests’ resistance to insecticides,and
dependency of farmers on all types of inputs have been the major
pressing issues faced by India’ s agriculture sector(Swaminathan,
2006). In some instances this has led to declining yields. To retain
crop productivity, farmers have felt compelled to boost fertilizer
and pesticide inputs in subsequent cropping cycles, thus in creasing the potential for secondary problems to occur(Hawkes and Ruel, 2006).