Agriculture

Chhattisgarh is known as the "rice bowl" of central India. Chhattisgarh used to produce over seventy percent of the total paddy production in the state. Apart from paddy, cereals like maize, kodo-kutki and other small millets, pulses like tur and kulthi and oilseeds like groundnut, soyabean, niger and sunflower are also grown. Chhattisgarh produced nearly half of all food grains, and one third of all major crops were grown in the undivided Madhya Pradesh during the kharif season. The main rabi crops of Chhattisgarh are jowar, gram, urad, mong and moth. Chhattisgarh produces 45 percent of the jower and over eighty percent of the gram which was produced in undivided Madhya Pradesh. Chhattisgarh produces very little wheat. A quarter of all produce of pulses in Madhya Pradesh during the rabi season comes from Chhattisgarh.

There are very few cash crops grown in Chhattisgarh, and there is a need to diversify the agriculture produce towards oilseeds and other cash crops.