Friday 15 February 2013

Choosing the Right Combination of Crops - Single (Season) Harvest & Multiple (Season) Harvest Crops

In our Agriculture for Everybody blog series, we are going to see how to choose the Right Combination of Crops.


We will extend the previous blog namely, "Choosing the Right Combination of Crops - Single Harvest & Multiple Harvest Crops" in this blog and understand the difference between them.  The farmers can use this as one more filter (criteria) to choose the right combination of crops.


What do I mean by Single (Season) Harvest & Multiple (Season) Harvest Crops?

Any crop that provides harvest only for one season is considered Single (Season) Harvest Crop.

For eg: Mango

A classical example is the Mango Crop which comes to harvest during the summer season and the season may be close to 3 months in time.

Please note that we can slightly extend the time period of the Single Season Harvest by choosing the right combination of varieties (where possible).  We have already covered this in our previous blogs.


Any crop that provides harvest for more than one season is considered Multiple (Season) Harvest Crop.

For eg: Coconut, Papaya

The Coconut Crop gives harvest throughtout the year and similar is the case for Papaya.


Is it necessity to go for only Single (Season) Harvest or Multiple (Season) Harvest Crops? Does one exclude the other?

Simply putting it, both are necessary.  I am repeating the same just to highlight the point that diversification is the main goal.

In a Single (Season) Harvest Crop, you will get the money in your hand only once during the harvest.

In a Multiple (Season) Harvest Crop, you will get the money as and when the harvest is completed and hence there may not be any cash flow difficulties.


How much percentage of Single (Season) Harvest & Multiple (Season) Harvest crops is required?

We should have a balanced approach here and ensure that both the crops have similar percentage of land allocated to it.

The idea is to have a combination of both the crops so that we have continuous work in our farm as well as to ensure the cash flow is steady.

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