Farming on the Ganges

Farming on the River Ganges has very diverse results depending on where you farm on the river. Once the land becomes flatter after the river has left the Himalayas the huge amount of sediment it deposits should make it perfect for arable farming. The overly high amount of oxygen in the Ganges makes conditions for arable farming all the better.

Before the first major settlement on the River Ganges, Kanpur, the soil is perfect for farming, with the extremes in temperature allowing for a diverse range of products being produced, such as potato, sugar and wheat. The products give enough combined nutritional value so that the farmers can do subsistence farming, whilst the conditions allow them to significantly over produce, so they can do some commercial farming as well. It is good for pastoral land as well, with 15% of India's livestock population in Utter Pradesh. The people north of Kanpur thank the Gods on the Ganges for promising harvests more often than not. Western Utter Pradesh, which is where the Ganges flows before any industrialisation, is the most productive agriculture area in Utter Pradesh.

Kanpur is a city with over 4,000,000 inhabitants, and has grown at an uncontrollable rate, due to this a lot of pollution and sewage is simply dumped into the Ganges. This has ruined the Ganges in many respects, and when bathers go into the river in Varanasi, drowning isn't the only threat they face, as the river could easily poison a human.

Between Kanpur and Varanasi there are many small fishing villages that once thrived. Now however, the river is killing the fish and many people are going hungry. They thought they'd try their luck at subsistence arable farming, but the deposits from the river has poisoned the soil as well, meaning that seeds fail to germinate. This leads to people migrating to Kanpur and Varanasi, continuing the vicious circle of more pollution when more people live in an area.

It's hard to get a poor country with over 1,000,000,000 inhabitants to 'go green', so it looks like bathing in the Ganges will soon have to come to an end, which will be a cultural disaster for India and there will be more pressure on Western Utter Pradesh to produce the goods.