Kheti

About Kheti

Overview

Kheti — the word simply means "farming" — is the Hindi monthly farm magazine of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), published from New Delhi. It is one of the oldest agricultural periodicals in India, with a history stretching back to 1948, and it has served generations of farmers, agricultural students, teachers, and extension workers as a trusted source of practical farming knowledge in Hindi. Where ICAR's research journals speak to scientists, Kheti speaks to the field: its articles translate research from the Council's institutes into guidance that a farmer can apply in the next cropping season.

The magazine covers the full spectrum of Indian agriculture — field crops, horticulture, animal husbandry, fisheries, farm machinery, soil and water management, plant protection, agricultural economics, and government schemes for farmers. Published by the country's apex agricultural research body, it carries the authority of the institution behind the Green Revolution, and it remains a staple of agricultural college libraries, Krishi Vigyan Kendras (farm science centres), and the bookshelves of progressive farmers across the Hindi-speaking states.

History

Kheti dates back to 1948, the year after Independence, when the newly sovereign nation faced the urgent task of feeding itself and modernising its agriculture. Farm journalism was still young in India — agricultural publishing had begun at the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute in the early 1900s — and ICAR's decision to launch a Hindi farm magazine reflected the understanding that agricultural knowledge had to reach farmers in their own language to be useful. The magazine's early decades are documented in ICAR's own records: the Council's annual report for 1951–52 notes that the printing of Kheti was entrusted to a Delhi press to ensure regularity of publication, evidence of a periodical already established enough to worry about meeting its schedule.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, Kheti chronicled and supported the Green Revolution — the introduction of high-yielding wheat and rice varieties, the expansion of irrigation and fertiliser use, and the extension system that carried these innovations to millions of farms. In the decades since, it has tracked the subsequent transformations of Indian agriculture: diversification into horticulture and dairying, water-saving technologies, integrated pest management, organic and natural farming, farm mechanisation, and the digital tools now reaching the village. Few Indian magazines of any kind have documented a single sector of national life so continuously for so long.

The Publisher: ICAR

Kheti is published by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, an autonomous organisation under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India. ICAR's origins go back to 1929, when it was established as the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research; it is today one of the largest agricultural research systems in the world, coordinating research institutes, agricultural universities, and Krishi Vigyan Kendras across every state.

Within ICAR, the magazine is produced by the Council's publications and knowledge-management arm — the Directorate of Knowledge Management in Agriculture (formerly the Directorate of Information and Publications of Agriculture, DIPA). ICAR's own publications literature describes Kheti and its Hindi companion Phal Phool as "popular magazines, which cater to the needs of farmers and students," distinguishing them from the Council's research journals. This popular mandate shapes everything about Kheti: the language is simple Hindi, the articles are practical, and the emphasis is on what works in the field rather than on academic debate.

Content and Editorial Approach

A typical issue of Kheti carries articles on seasonal crop operations — what to sow, when to irrigate, how to manage pests — alongside features on new crop varieties released by ICAR institutes, improved breeds of livestock, and techniques for dairying, poultry, and fisheries. Horticulture, from fruit orchards to vegetable cultivation and floriculture, receives regular attention, as do soil health, water management, farm machinery, and post-harvest processing. Articles on agricultural economics, marketing, and government schemes help farmers understand the policy environment in which they operate.

The editorial approach is deliberately instructional without being condescending. Articles are written by agricultural scientists and extension specialists, but in a popular style aimed at the progressive farmer and at students and teachers of agriculture. Photographs and illustrations show techniques in practice, and seasonal timeliness is a hallmark: the sowing-season issues address kharif and rabi operations, while special features respond to emerging challenges such as pest outbreaks, drought, or new government programmes. The goal, as with all of ICAR's popular publications, is to present scientific information in a form that solves day-to-day problems on the farm.

The ICAR Magazine Family

Kheti is the Hindi flagship of a small family of ICAR popular magazines. Its English counterpart is Indian Farming, published monthly in English since 1940 and described as India's most authoritative and popular farming magazine, covering crops, animals, poultry, fish, agricultural technology, extension, economics, and policy across India's varied agro-climatic zones. Indian Horticulture, an English bi-monthly started in 1956, focuses on fruits, vegetables, flowers, gardening, and landscaping. Phal Phool, the Hindi bi-monthly, complements Kheti with a horticultural emphasis.

Alongside these popular magazines, ICAR publishes research journals including the Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences and the Indian Journal of Animal Sciences, which carry original research for the scientific community. The popular magazines and the research journals together form a knowledge pipeline: findings published in the journals are distilled, after validation, into the practical guidance that appears in Kheti — a model of research-to-extension communication that has operated for more than seventy-five years.

Readership and the Extension System

Kheti's readers are the backbone of Indian agriculture: farmers in the Hindi-speaking states, students of agriculture and veterinary science, teachers at agricultural universities, and the extension workers of state departments and Krishi Vigyan Kendras who advise farmers at the village level. For agricultural students, the magazine is both a study aid and a window into the practical realities of farming; for extension workers, it is a source of validated recommendations to pass on to farmers.

The magazine's role in the extension system is structural. India's agricultural extension network — the Krishi Vigyan Kendras, state agricultural departments, and ICAR institutes — depends on printed and now digital material to carry consistent, science-based advice to the field. Kheti has been part of that material for three generations, and its articles are frequently cited in training programmes, farmer fairs, and classroom teaching. In an era of WhatsApp forwards and unverified agronomic advice, a magazine backed by ICAR's research system offers farmers a standard of reliability that matters.

From Print to Digital

Like all legacy print publications, Kheti has adapted to the digital age. Back issues and recent editions circulate as PDFs through agricultural knowledge portals, and the magazine's content reaches readers who may never have held the print edition. This digital afterlife has extended Kheti's reach to agricultural students and young farmers who consume information on phones, while the print edition continues to serve readers in areas with limited connectivity — still a reality across much of rural India.

The transition also reflects a broader change in agricultural communication. Where Kheti was once nearly the only Hindi source of validated farm advice, it now operates alongside television programmes, YouTube channels, mobile apps, and social media groups. Its enduring advantage is institutional: the articles are produced within the national agricultural research system, reviewed by specialists, and free from the commercial pressures that shape much of today's agri-media.

Significance in Indian Farm Journalism

Kheti holds a foundational place in the history of Indian farm journalism. Histories of agricultural communication in India list its launch in 1948 as a landmark, alongside the start of agricultural publishing at the research institutes in 1906 and the launch of ICAR's research journals in 1931. It demonstrated, at a time when most agricultural science was published in English, that there was both a need and an audience for serious farm journalism in Hindi — a proposition that later inspired a whole ecosystem of Hindi agricultural magazines, both public and private.

The magazine also embodies a particular philosophy of development communication: that the farmer is a rational decision-maker who, given reliable information in an accessible form, will adopt better practices. That philosophy powered the Green Revolution's extension effort, and it continues to animate Kheti's pages as Indian agriculture confronts new challenges — climate variability, water scarcity, soil degradation, and the need to raise farm incomes. After more than seven and a half decades, Kheti remains what it was created to be: the research system's monthly letter to the Indian farmer.

How to Access

Kheti is published monthly in Hindi from New Delhi by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. Subscriptions and institutional orders can be placed through ICAR's publications and knowledge-management division; the magazine is also widely available through agricultural university libraries, Krishi Vigyan Kendras, and digital archives of agricultural literature. Farmers, students, and extension workers seeking practical, research-backed farming guidance in Hindi will find in Kheti one of the most authoritative and long-running sources available — a magazine that has accompanied Indian agriculture from the anxieties of 1948 to the digital fields of today.