"Annadata"- Indian farmer-Part 1

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways."
                                                                                                                                  'John F. Kennedy'

The  basic requirements  for human beings are food, clothes and shelter. Food is most basic and foremost important among them, without which we can't  imagine our lives.Its ridiculous that farmers who produce grains for millions of people of our country, are unable to lead even an ordinary life.In spite of total production of agriculture sector is $366.92 billion, farmers are living a life below average. They live a miserable life and work with minimum wages still lack the respect what they deserve.Apart from this, the heart-rending incidents of farmers committing suicides as a result of inability to pay their debt is shameful for our nation.

Agricultural sector plays a strategic role in the process of economic development of a country. Thriving agriculture is necessary to ensure food security, livelihood and to provide raw material to agro-processing sector. 17% of India's GDP contribution comes from agriculture, which is continuously decreasing. India is 2nd larger producer of agriculture product. India accounts for 7.68 percent of total global agricultural output.

Despite it being an important sector, it continues to be ridden by problems which have hampered its growth and ability to generate remunerative livelihood. The various reasons are :

1)Rising population has resulted in decline in land holding by farmers. Thus India currently has significant population of small and marginal farmers who hold 2-5 hectare of land. 

2)Equitable and efficient distribution and utilization of land has been hampered by failure of land reforms. Smaller land size restricts the possibility of mechanization to increase the yield and productivity.

3)Public investment in rural areas is still low and whatever is spent has not resulted in development of rural infrastructure. Almost more than half of country lacks irrigation infrastructure. Irrigation is necessary to raise the productivity of dry-land farming.

4)Most of the farmers depend on informal lenders to meet their agricultural requirement due to lack of access to formal credit system caused by absence of rural banking network, lack of land titles and documents. These informal lenders charge high interest rates sweeping all their income and most of the times pushing them into trap of indebtedness. In this critical situation they end up losing their land to these lenders to pay their debt and lose their the only mean of subsistence.

5)Poor physical infrastructure such as roads, unfair distribution of cold storage facility, lack of market etc have weakened forward linkage of agricultural supply chain.  

6)Marketing reforms under APMC(Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee) act 2003 still eludes agricultural markets in most of the states.
As agriculture is a state subject according to Indian constitution , central government can only provide guidelines and support financially and through centrally sponsored schemes and thus it's the will of the State Government whether it amends its strategy or not.

7) E-NAM was launched too promote price discovery and help farmers realize the value of their produce is still to take off. Absence of clear guideline on contract farming has been a hurdle to industry-farmer partnership.

6)Recent deaths of farmers in Yavatmal due to inhalation of toxic pesticides, is an example of gap in extension services. Research for the development of high yielding and climate resistant seed varieties, sustainable agricultural practices has been slow and inadequate.

7)Government policies in declaration and procurement of produce under Minimum price support, has fueled growth of cereal centric agriculture. This has been a major factor behind depletion of resources, lack of diversification.

These factors have inflated the input cost and risks in farming without adequately compensating the farmers for their produce. Agriculture has been losing its sheen world over, due to presence of other lucrative opportunities. 

With a view to focus on the issues of farmers welfare, the DAC&FW has created a separate Division called 'Farmers Welfare' under the charge of a senior officer. The Government believes, that farmers' welfare will improve if there is increase in net income from the farms. With this end in view, the approach is to reduce cost of cultivation, enable higher yield per unit and realize remunerative prices.

Various programmes/ schemes for the development of agriculture sector are being implemented in a decentralized manner with flexibility to State Governments to formulate and implement appropriate projects to suit their specific requirements. Some of the  Centrally Sponsored Schemes such as National Food Security Mission (NFSM), National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH), National Mission on Oil seeds & Oil Palm (NMOOP), National Mission on Agricultural Extension & Technology (NMAET), Unified National Agriculture Markets, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), National Crop Insurance Programme (NCIP) etc. are for welfare of farmers. But these schemes have not proved to be efficient enough as were expected to be because these schemes are moderately successful in serving the needs of the farmers due to their limited accessibility by the huge mass of farmers. 

Other measures taken for the benefit of the farmers include enhancement in the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) to eliminate distress sale of agricultural produce by farmers, support to the farmers from time to time like debt waiver/relief, interest subvention on crop loans, revival package for strengthening Short Term Rural Cooperative Credit Structure, etc. But the pity condition of farmers will only be improved when the governments would be able to provide advantage of their schemes to every nook and corner of the farmers' community . Otherwise , "Sabka Sath Sabka Vikas" will remain just a slogan in absence of proper mechanism to serve farmers. Note that contribution of Agriculture sector in Indian economy is much higher than world's average (6.1%). Remember that agriculture is the greatest and fundamentally the most important of our industries. The cities are but the branches of the tree of national life, the roots of which go deeply into the land. We all flourish or decline with the farmer.

"No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."

'BOOKER T. WASHINGTON'