Colonial British Era

Few Indian commercial crops made it to the global market under the British Raj in In India. Cotton, indigo, opium, and rice were known in particular. The second half of the 19th century saw some increase in land under cultivation, and agricultural production expanded at an average rate of about 1 percent per year by the later 19th century. Due to extensive irrigation by canal networks Punjab, Narmada valley, and Andhra Pradesh became centers of agrarian reforms.
Roy (2006) comments on the Influence of the world wars on the Indian agricultural system:
Agricultural performance in the interwar period (1918–1939) was dismal. From 1891 to 1946, the annual growth rate of all crop output was 0.4 percent, and food-grain output was practically stagnant. There were significant regional and intercrop differences, however, nonfood crops doing better than food crops. Among food crops, by far the most important source of stagnation was rice. Bengal had below-average growth rates in both food and nonfood crop output, whereas Punjab and Madras were the least stagnant regions. In the interwar period, population growth accelerated while food output decelerated, leading to declining availability of food per head. The crisis was most acute in Bengal, where food output declined at an annual rate of about 0.7 percent from 1921 to 1946, when population grew at an annual rate of about 1 percent.
The British regime in India did supply the irrigation works but rarely on the scale required. Community effort and private investment soared as market for irrigation developed. Agricultural prices of some commodities rose to about three times between 1870-1920.