More than 60% of the total population in the basin lives in rural areas and their major occupation is agriculture. The land under cultivation in the basin is 48%. Around 24% of the cultivable area has some means of irrigation or other. The crops grown in the area vary from region to region, however major crops are paddy, sugarcane, ragi and jowar. Apart from these, some other crops such as coffee, pepper, banana, betel vine, gingili, onion, cotton, black gram are also grown.
This map shows distribution of paddy throughout the basin. Major paddy producing areas are eastern coastal or deltaic regions of Tamil Nadu i.e. Thanjavur and Nagapattinam. Cuddalore and Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu and Mandya in Karnataka are also the areas where paddy cultivation is done at a large scale. While central part of the basin has lesser areas covered by paddy, but it can be observed that all the districts contribute to the paddy production in the area.
Area under ragi is considerably less than Paddy, but the major ragi producing region is the Mysore plateau. Chamrajnagar in Karnataka and Dharamapuri, Salem and Erode in Tamil Nadu are the main ragi cultivating areas. Some other areas that have some areas under ragi cultivation are Tumkur, Mandya and Hassan in Karnataka.
Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu is the major sugarcane growing district in the entire basin. Chamrajnagar, Dharampapuri, Erode and Namakkal are other areas that cultivate sugarcane in some areas. All other areas have less regions under sugarcane cultivation.
Mandya in Karnataka and Coimbatore, Dindigul in Tamil Nadu are the districts that cultivate jowar. Some other areas in the northwest of the basin also have some areas under jowar cultivation as in the south east of the basin. Jowar, it appears is not grown in the costal belt.