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Agriculture in Vidarbha Before Cotton: Millets, Pulses, Oilseeds

Close-up of jowar heads with kodo and kutki grains, tur pods, and linseed on a wooden tray
Millets, pulses, and oilseeds that formed the everyday crop base of Vidarbha before cotton became dominant

In Vidarbha, the public story of farming often begins and ends with cotton. The district records tell a wider story, built around food grains, pulse crops, edible oils, and cultivation linked to forested hills and river valleys.


The region’s older farm economy relied on crop mixes that moved with soils and rainfall, and on household strategies that included after-crops, mixed sowing, and seasonal labour split between fields and forests.

Archival crop tables show that cotton grew alongside other staples for decades, rather than replacing them overnight.


Crop diversity recorded before cotton dominance


Across the districts of Vidarbha, early twentieth-century crop tables show multiple staples running in parallel rather than a single-crop system.


In the Berar tract, district statistics for 1903–04 recorded large blocks of cultivated area under jowar and cotton, with sizeable acreage also under wheat, pulses, and oilseeds. In the same provincial tables, jowar and cotton each accounted for more than four thousand square miles, while wheat, pulses, and oilseeds each occupied around one thousand square miles.


The figures were presented as a working description of what farmers actually planted across the two main seasons, and they also recorded the declining importance of the spring harvest compared with the autumn harvest in many places due to rainfall distribution and crop choice.


The Berar district accounts put numbers on how non-cotton crops stayed significant even within a cotton trading zone. Amravati’s 1903–04 cropped area included 898 square miles of jowar, compared with 1,075 square miles of cotton.

Wheat covered 126 square miles, pulses 97 square miles, and oilseeds 44 square miles, with linseed singled out as the main oilseed. Akola’s 1903–04 figures described jowar at 779 square miles, pulses at 90 square miles, and wheat at 41 square miles, while cotton covered roughly half of the net cropped area.


Buldhana’s crop table recorded wheat at 264 square miles and oilseeds at 205 square miles, against jowar at 495 square miles and cotton at 615 square miles. Wun was noted for comparatively larger pulse and oilseed acreage, with 283 square miles under pulses and 173 square miles under oilseeds alongside jowar and cotton. These numbers matter to history because they show pulses and oilseeds as routine field choices in the cotton region, not side activities.

The same pattern appears in the adjoining districts of the Central Provinces. In a 1908 district survey for the Nagpur area, the 1905–06 distribution of crops showed cotton at 476,000 acres and jowar at 423,000 acres, with wheat at 211,000 acres and linseed at 67,000 acres.


Arhar covered 113,000 acres, and til, rice, and another pulse group were each listed in the range of 20,000 to 30,000 acres. The survey also recorded a change over time, noting that at the previous settlement point wheat and jowar each covered about a quarter of the cropped area, and cotton and linseed each about 12 per cent.


The same passage stated that the district earlier had four staple crops and, by 1905–06, was close to depending on two. That shift is one of the clearest administrative snapshots of how crop variety began to narrow, even while several non-cotton staples remained substantial in acreage.


These administrative tables did not treat crop choice as abstract. They tied crops to specific zones within a district: wheat and linseed in heavy-soil plains, rice near tank country and borders with rice districts, and a broad belt of mixed autumn sowings in black soils.


They also linked crop diversity to practices like after-cropping. In the Nagpur district account, after-crops were recorded mainly in rice tracts, where pulses such as urad and lakhori were sown into damp fields. The same survey listed double-cropped acreage and described late rainfall as a key condition for taking a second crop.


Millets as staples in plains, valleys, and hills


Millets were the everyday cereals that tied together household food and livestock feed across a broad belt of dryland farming.


In Berar, the staple food grain was repeatedly identified as jowar, and the crop tables placed it at the centre of the harvest calendar. The agricultural chapter also recorded crop yields per acre for different staples, listing jowar at 515 pounds per acre in the same table that listed gram, tur, linseed, and sesamum.


The millet story is not limited to jowar. In the Berar hill zone of Melghat, an Ellichpur district note described jowar as the staple, but added that hill cultivation included fodo and ral, and it recorded separate acreage for “other cereals” in the hills that included these grains.

The same account noted that rice and wheat were grown in the hills earlier in larger amounts than at the time of reporting, and it provided acreage figures showing rice and wheat at relatively small levels in 1903–04 compared with jowar and cotton in the plains. These “other cereals” entries matter because they show minor millets appearing in official crop categories rather than surviving only in oral memory.


In the Bhandara district, the crop chapter broke down the area by grain and explicitly listed kodon and kutki as a combined category. For 1905–06, kodon and kutki together covered 30,000 acres, alongside jowar at 88,000 acres and rice at 433,000 acres. The same district discussion reported that jowar had gained popularity between the 1890s and the mid-1900s, even while rice acreage declined by tens of thousands of acres compared with 1893–94.


The Bhandara tables also made clear that millet cultivation was not confined to one season or one role. Kodo and kutki were listed among principal food crops, and pulses and oilseeds were discussed as second crops in damp rice fields, which indicates a grain–pulse–oilseed sequence that depended on moisture retained after paddy.

The Wardha district account gives a close look at millet as both a crop and a system. It described jowar as the main food grain and recorded acreage changes over time, with the crop expanding in the early twentieth century after poor spring harvests increased its popularity.


The text also listed local jowar varieties, including types selected for soil quality and pest avoidance, and it described sowing and field preparation practices using local implements. This level of detail shows that millet cultivation involved variety choice, timing, and tools suited to black soils and monsoon sowing.


Millets were also tied to livestock through fodder. Stalks from millet fields were repeatedly treated as a major feed source in district agriculture chapters, and fodder supplies influenced how households managed cattle and how they timed field operations.


This connection between grain and fodder is part of why millet acreage stayed relevant even as cotton expanded, because millet residues fed plough animals and supported mixed farming rather than a one-crop economy.


Pulses and oilseeds as routine field crops and after-crops


Pulses and oilseeds were embedded in both food habits and soil management, and the district material treats them as regular crops rather than marginal additions. In Berar, the crop-yield table listed gram at 244 pounds per acre and tur at 240 pounds per acre, alongside linseed at 159 pounds per acre and sesamum at 108 pounds per acre.


Those entries show pulses and oilseeds measured and compared in the same standard format as cereals, and they were used to assess both production and the stability of the harvest.


In the Berar district breakdowns, pulses appeared as their own acreage category, and Wun was explicitly described as having pulses and oilseeds more extensively cultivated than other districts in the same tract.

This reported difference matters historically because it shows that pulse and oilseed emphasis varied by district even within a cotton trading zone. It indicates that local demand, soil fit, and rainfall timing created different crop mixes from place to place.

The Nagpur district account provides one of the hardest sets of figures on the non-cotton economy.


For 1905–06, it recorded linseed at 67,000 acres and arhar at 113,000 acres, and it described arhar as being grown mostly as a mixture with jowar or cotton. It also described Til as a crop that expanded in acreage early and then declined by 1905–06, with the reason stated directly as displacement by cotton. This is the kind of administrative language that shows crop substitution in process, with one oilseed losing acreage as cotton expands on the same black soils.


Wardha’s district crop chapter offers comparable detail. It described Til as a crop covering tens of thousands of acres and listed distinct varieties by seed colour and sowing season.

It also listed gram at around 10,000 acres and named other pulses grown in the cold season, including masur, tiura, and peas, with mung noted as an autumn pulse mixed with jowar. The same chapter described arhar as principally mixed with jowar or cotton and included practical uses for arhar stalks in grain storage and household items. That detail matters because it ties pulses to everyday material culture, not just field statistics.


Bhandara offers the strongest evidence for pulses and oilseeds in sequence farming. Its 1905–06 crop breakdown placed tiura at 110,000 acres, linseed at 69,000 acres, urad and mung together at 61,000 acres, and gram at 45,000 acres. The same passage stated that linseed, tiura, lakhori, gram and urad were usually sown as second crops.


Another section noted that in areas with embanked fields, rice might be followed by urad, linseed or beans. This is a clear historical description of after-cropping in damp paddy ground, and it shows that oilseed and pulse cultivation were linked to the rice economy and to the ability to take advantage of residual moisture.


The Chanda district statistical tables provide another view of pulses, oilseeds and millets in a forested district economy.


One table separated kharif crops such as til and cotton from rabi crops, including wheat, gram, jowar and linseed, and it provided acreage figures for each category for years beginning in the 1890s.


Later tables listed rice and the kodon-kutki category in kharif statistics and also recorded pulses such as urad and mung alongside tiura. These tables show that oilseeds and pulses were not just present, but tracked in formal year-by-year reporting in a district where forests and rice cultivation were major features of land use.


Forest agriculture and the narrowing of crop choice


Forest agriculture in Vidarbha was not just a matter of gathering forest produce. It included farming systems that used forest clearings, sloped fields, and cycles of cultivation and fallow.


A 1969 evaluation report on shifting cultivators in the Chanda area described the local practice under names including dhaiya and bewar, and it stated that it was done on the slopes of the Chhota and Bada Madia Hills.


The report described clearing and burning vegetation and then sowing directly into ash-covered soil. In one short line describing sowing practice, it said, “Rice and other lesser millets are mixed and thrown on the field.” The same description noted that ploughing was not used, and that a plot might be abandoned after one crop, with a second crop of kutki taken in some cases, followed by a long fallow period before the cycle was repeated.

This description links forest cultivation directly to millet history because it identifies specific minor millets as part of the seed mix. It also links forest cultivation to rice, which mattered in the south and east of the region, where embanked fields and tank irrigation supported paddy, and where after-cropping of pulses and oilseeds followed the main rice harvest. The Chanda district statistical tables reinforce this, placing rice and kodon-kutki as major kharif entries over multiple years.

Forest-linked farming also appears in official forest management documents that record earlier practice.


A recent working plan document for the Allapalli forest tract recorded that shifting cultivation and selection felling were carried out in the Ex-Aheri zamindari forest area until 1902, and that shifting cultivation was then stopped when the estate came under new management. In another passage, the same document described how forest labour availability fluctuated with village agriculture, noting shortages during planting and weeding periods tied to paddy transplanting and related field operations.


Even though the working plan is a forestry document, it preserves pieces of the older agricultural economy by recording that paddy work drew labour away from forestry and that shifting cultivation had been part of land use in the same forest tract before the twentieth century.


The narrowing of crop choice can be traced through the same district records that preserve crop diversity.


In Nagpur, the crop distribution section stated that cotton expansion altered the balance between autumn and spring crops after settlement, and it gave both the 1905–06 crop shares and the earlier settlement shares that included linseed as a major staple.

In Wardha, the district narrative explicitly linked the expansion of jowar and cotton to a decline in other crops in at least one tahsil-level description, and it treated pulses and oilseeds increasingly as mixed or secondary crops rather than the central staples they had been in earlier acreage patterns.


The record does not show a single moment when cotton erased other agriculture. It shows a process where cotton expanded rapidly in some decades, while millets, pulses, and oilseeds continued to occupy large areas and to structure the food economy.


It also shows that in forested districts and hill zones, crop choice was never only a market decision. It was linked to slope, soil depth, access to irrigation tanks, and the ability to manage a cultivation cycle that included long fallows and seed mixes of rice and minor millets.


The older agriculture of this region survives most clearly in the details that administrators wrote down because they needed to measure it. The evidence sits in crop lists that include minor millets by name, in acreage tables that place linseed and til alongside wheat and rice, and in descriptions of sowing mixtures where pulses were treated as both food and field strategy.


Those pages show a farming history where cotton was one crop among several, and where food grains and edible oils were part of the same connected system of fields, fodder, and forest margins.

FAQs


Q: Which millets were grown in mixed farming systems before cotton-dominant agriculture?

A: Millets such as jowar were core food grains, and minor millets like kodo and kutki appear in district crop tables and hill cultivation descriptions alongside rice and other cereals.


Q: What is the Historical role of pulses and oilseeds in dryland districts with black soils?

A: Arhar, gram, urad, mung, linseed, and til were recorded across multiple districts as routine crops, used in mixtures, rotations, and after-cropping in damp rice fields.


Q: What are the recorded shifting cultivation practices in forested tracts and their crop combinations?

A: Shifting cultivation in forest hills was documented as a cycle of clearing and burning followed by sowing mixes that included rice and minor millets, with fields often used briefly and then left fallow for longer periods.


References




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About the Author

Pranay Arya is the founder and editor of The News Dirt, an independent journalism platform focused on ground-level reporting across Vidarbha. He has authored 800+ research-based articles covering public issues, regional history, infrastructure, governance, and socio-economic developments, building one of the region’s most extensive digital knowledge archives.

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