Western India comprises roughly the long narrow coastal area from the Rann of Kutch to north Kanara; the wide flat Gujarat plains and the Deccan plateaus. The Rann of Kutch, with its low and uncertain rainfall, was semi-pastoral; bajra and jawar were the main crops. These were the main cereals too in the Gujarat plains, though some rice was also grown; cotton was the main cash crop. There is much more rainfall in the coastal lowlands of the Konkan, so rice was the main crop, followed by ragi, pulses and fodder crops. In the Deccan plateaus where again the rainfall is low and irrigation scanty, hardly any rice was grown. The area was extensively cultivated, with some double cropping. The main foodgrain was jawar; other food crops were wheat, bajra, sugar and oilseeds. In some districts over half the total sown area was under cotton. And finally in the far south, there was the mainly hilly coastal district of north Kanara.

In parts of western India agricultural commodities were traded from relatively early periods. One reason for the commercialization of agriculture was the physical suitability of land for cash crops such as cotton and tobacco. Another was the relatively high degree of urbanization – apart from the large industrial centres like Bombay and Ahmedabad, there were numerous small cities, especially in politically fragmented Saurashtra. At the same time, most of the area was dependent on highly variable rainfall – in the 1920s only a third of Bombay Presidency was officially classified as not liable to famine, and one-third was ‘very liable to famine’.