ABSTRACT
Sustainable agriculture is the need of the hour. Before the advent of coffee plantation in
Kodagu district of Karnataka state in India, in the latter half of the 19th century,
agriculture was the major source of livelihood for the population with paddy being the
staple crop. It is said that there was time when Kodaguproduced surplus paddy even for
exports and sometimes the excess was never utilized and hence waswasted due to lack
of transport and marketing facilities. Farmers could not even winnow and store the
paddy.2 However, things changed with the increase in population. The area under
cultivation of coffeeexpanded at the cost of deforestation, which in turn is costing heavily
now in the form of reduced numberof rainy days, erratic and untimely rainfall leading
to seasonal water scarcity. Besides, the advent of ginger cultivation in the recent years
has led to further deforestation and conversion of paddy fields into ginger growing beds.
In the process of ginger cultivation the water which otherwise used to get collected in the
paddy fields is drained out to save the ginger rhizomes from rotting. This has affected
the percolation process and led to decline in the water table. The ramification is,
drying of wells and farmponds in the surrounding area. Hence, the crop budgeting of
paddy and ginger is calculated to find out the reasons for the shift in the cropping
pattern, its implications on income and employment.