Final answer:
Agricultural production declined after the British agrarian policies shifted focus to cash crops for export, leading to land evictions and the replacement of food crops, disruptions in local economies, devastating famines, and soil degradation.
Step-by-step explanation:
Agricultural production declined after the British introduced new agrarian policies because these policies prioritized the cultivation of cash crops over subsistence crops, leading to a disruption in food supply. Farmers who were unable to pay British taxes were frequently evicted, transforming former food-producing lands into plantations focused on crops like cotton, tea, sugar, and opium aimed at export markets rather than local sustenance.
Additionally, the forcible inclusion of local economies into the global market caused local textile and other manufacturing sectors to decline due to deindustrialization, further impacting the agricultural sector. This led to devastating famines and a reliance on imported British goods. The Industrial Revolution similarly altered farming practices, shifting from subsistence to large-scale monoculture, which increased dependency on new technology but also made local practices and economies more vulnerable.
The shift to plantation agriculture greatly impacted the local food supply and economies. Native crops were replaced by export crops, and land once dedicated to feeding local populations was diverted to meet the demands of European markets. Such changes in land use often resulted in soil degradation, affecting future agricultural productivity.
In India, for instance, the focus on cash crops meant that famines occurred when food production could not keep pace with the rapid population growth facilitated by improved healthcare and farming methods introduced by the British. Such imbalances led to some thirty million people dying from famine as India shifted from being a manufacturing nation to primarily an export economy under British colonial practices.