CROPS

• Rice is the most important staple crop.
• Irrigation water from rivers, canals, dams or wells is extensively used in the major rice producing countries.
• Other food crops like maize, millet, sorghum, wheat, gram and beans are of subsidiary importance. They are cultivated in the drier or cooler areas where rice cannot be grown.

LOW LAND CASH CROP

• The most important crop in this category is cane sugar.
• As much as two-thirds of world’s sugar production comes from tropical countries.
• Some of the major producers include India, Java, Formosa, Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados.
• Jute is confined almost entirely to the Ganges – Brahmaputra delta, in India and Bangladesh.
• Other crops include cotton, a major commercial crop of the Indian sub-continent.

HIGHLAND PLANTATION CROPS

• The colonization of tropical lands by Europeans gave rise to a new form of cultivated landscape in the cooler monsoonal highlands.
• Thousands of acres of tropical upland forests were cleared to make way for plantation agriculture in which tea and coffee are the most important crops.

COFFEE

• Coffee originated in Ethiopia and Arabia.
• But Brazil accounts for almost half the world’s production of coffee.
• It is mainly grown on the eastern slopes of the Brazilian plateau.
• The crop is also cultivated on the highland slopes in the Central American states, India and eastern Java.

TEA

• Tea originated in China and is still an important crop there.
• It requires moderate temperatures (about 15° C), heavy rainfall (over 150 cm) and well drained highland slopes.
• It thrives well in the tropical monsoon zone (highlands).
• The best regions are thus the Himalayan foothills of India and Bangladesh, the central highlands of Sri Lanka and western Java, from all of which it is exported.
• In China tea is grown mostly for local consumption.

LUMBERING

• Most of the forests yield valuable timber and are prized for their durable hardwood.
• Lumbering is undertaken in the more accessible areas. This is particularly important in continental South-East Asia.
• Of the tropical deciduous trees, teak, of which Burma is the leading producer, is perhaps the most sought after. It is valuable on account of its great durability, strength, immunity to shrinkage, fungus attack and insects.
• Teak logs are so heavy that they will not float readily on water. It is therefore necessary to ‘poison’ the tree several years before actual felling, so that it is dry and light enough to be floated down the Chindwin and the Irrawaddy to reach the sawmills at Rangoon.
• Other kinds of timber include Neem, Banyan, Mango, Teak, Sal, Acacia, Eucalyptus
• Together with the forests are bamboo thickets, which often grow to great heights.

TEAK

• Burma alone accounts for as much as three – quarters of the world’s production.
• It is such a durable timber that it is extensively used for ship building, furniture and other constructional purposes.

SHIFTING CULTIVATION

• This most primitive form of farming is widely practiced.
• Instead of rotating the crops in the same field to preserve fertility, the tribesmen move to a new clearing when their first field is exhausted.
• Maize, dry padi, sweet potatoes and some beans are the most common crops.
• Farming is entirely for subsistence, i.e., everything is consumed by the farmer’s family, it is not traded or sold.
• As tropical soils are rapidly leached and easily exhausted, the first crop may be bountiful, but the subsequent harvests deteriorate.
• Shifting cultivation is so widely practiced amongst indigenous peoples that different local names are used in different countries