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ANDHRA PRADESH

Geographical position and climate

The residuary state of Andhra Pradesh is situated in Southern Peninsula of India with a
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geographical area of 1,60,205km and is the eighth biggest state in the country. The state lies
between 12°41' and 19.07°N latitude and 77° and 84°40'E longitude, and is bordered
by Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Orissa in the north, the Bay of Bengal in the East, Tamil Nadu to
the south and Karnataka to the west. It has country’s second longest coast line of 974 km running
all along the eastern side of the state. The area occupied by agricultural land including
plantations is about 48% and that of forests is 22.6%. There are 6 different agro-climatic zones

within the state and approximately comprises about 76.21 lakh farm holdings. Majority of
holdings in the state are small and marginal with average size of 1.06 ha. The state receives an
average / normal rainfall of 556 mm from south-west and 296 mm from north-east monsoon. The
agriculture sectorial growth rate of GVA of Andhra Pradesh is 14.03%. The net sown area in the
state is about 62.08 lakh ha, where in more than 16 lakh ha are sown more than once. The

cultivated area under rainfed conditions constitutes 52% of total net cropped area. The area under
food grains during 2016-17 was 41.3 lakh ha.

Soils

Red, black and alluvial type of soils is predominant in Andhra Pradesh (A.P.). Within these

major categories, there are 22 types of soils varying in texture, depth and fertility status. Out of
these 22 different types of soils, 6 types together occupy 88% of geographical area. Predominant
among them are (i) loamy to clayey deep reddish brown soils (20.4%), (ii) clayey to gravelly
clayey moderately deep dark brown soils (918.6%), (iii) shallow gravelly red soils (10.4%),
(iv)moderately deep calcareous black soils (9.57%) and (v) deep black clayey soils (7.7%). Soils
are acidic to alkali in nature with pH ranging from 4.2 to 10.2. Soils are low in available

nitrogen, medium to high in available phosphorus and potassium. Among micronutrients,
deficiency ofzinc (19%) is a major problem. The boron and sulphur deficiencies in the districts
varied from 2 to 30%. As much as 58.70 lakh ha of various degraded and wastelands are present
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in the residual A.P. Water eroding land (> 10 t ha year ), which is spread across the state itself
occupy 48.40 lakh ha in residual A.P resulting in fast depletion of fertile top soil. In addition to
this degrading land, saline and alkali soils amounting to 2.71 lakh ha are occurring in 10 districts
of A.P.

Crops and cropping systems

The major crops in the state are paddy, cotton, pulses, groundnut, chickpea, redgram and
sugarcane. The total food grain production in the state was 156.8 lakh tons during 2016-17. The