Wish a Happy New Year to all my blog readers. Today I thought of sharing my understanding on Farmer’s distress that has become of late a political agenda for winning the elections. Various political parties are claiming various things that have been done in the past since independence to alleviate – poverty. We have listened many slogans in the past like “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” “Garibi hatao” “Doubling farmers’ income” etc. but the condition of the farmers neither have been improved nor Garibi has been erased, rather Garib (poor) is at the verge of elimination or are being dragged towards more precarious conditions. There are lot of suicides among the farmers that are being attributed due to farmers’ distress. To my understanding it is not 100 percent truth. Many of these suicides are due to social reasons: such as family problems, etc. However, that does not reduce the gravity of the problem. Even a farmer commits suicide due to farming distress must be a concern of the state/society. Let us examine now what are the problems that are pulling down the farmers’ income. If you seriously look at it, you will find the problems in the order of merit as given below:
- Problem:
Fragmentation and subdivision of land holdings: There are three terms important in economics or so in any field. These are Maximum, Optimum and Minimum. If anything goes below the minimum threshold it cannot be economic, therefore, sustainable. Exactly the same thing is happening here. Subsistence farmers are facing severe blow from farming distress due to their inability to cope up with the vagaries of farming eco-system.
Solutions:Law may be enacted to stop fragmentation and subdivision of agricultural land holding beyond optimum size that can give at least minimum farm income for a decent living and it will also help the farmers to fight with the distress arising due to vagaries of farming eco-system such as flood, draught, cyclone, low rainfall, cold wave, etc.
Alternative Solution:Consolidate the fragmented and subdivided lands of minimum size together by forming a cooperative or farming company and making the farmers an equity holder. Absorb them in the farming operations as wage holder in addition to the profit sharing as per their equity holding and simultaneously give them an alternative job in other sector to support the shortfall of their family income.
- Problem:
Land Use Planning:Leaving land use planning decision to farmers is not a wise approach. Most Problems of the farmers’ distress are wrong decision of crop selection, poor crop yield, poor pricing and poor marketing facilities.
Solutions: There should be experts’ intervention for suggesting and regulating the crop as well as their acreage according to soil type and market demand. Boom and bust theory of the nature is applicable in agriculture also. One year low production, farmers get high price which leads to huge increase in cropped area next year and subsequently glut of produce in the market causing drop in price. Demand and supply are not equated often for ensuring optimum price.
- Problem:
We are in a federal structure and should use strength of each other state rather than competing for self-sufficiency within the state. World is becoming a global village but our states are working even now as isolated country. Each state wants to grow everything without considering whether or not they have suitable weather /soil conditions for growing a crop. Ultimately it leads to farmers’ distress due to poor crop yield causing competitive pricing disadvantage.
Solutions:Mechanism followed in Goods and Service Tax (GST) to decide the tax structure by active involvement of all Finance Ministers of the states may be replicated for deciding the cropping pattern of the country and their acreage as per the domestic demand as well as export targets. This needs a major reform since we have to do away the present form of “agriculture-a state subject” and defining “agriculture” as a concurrent subject of the centre.
- Problem:
Only crop production is not the agriculture. Agriculture includes: crop husbandry including cereals, oil-seed, vegetables, pulses, spices, Medicinal and aromatic crops, ; plantation crops, etc; cattle farming; fisheries; meat production, etc. Hence addressing farmers’ distress by announcing enhanced Minimum Support Price (MSP) for a miniscule number of crops like cereals, pulses and oilseeds will not address the problem of all categories of farming community. Moreover, problems of farmers also vary state to state. In some states irrigation is a problem; in some states drainage is a problem; in some states no water is a problem; in some states marketing is problem; in some states storage is a problem; in some states availability of electricity is a problem; in some states availability of inputs is a problem. There are n-number of problems and it needs redressal.
Solutions:Like a Planning Commission of India, an Agricultural Planning Commission(APC) may be constituted for planning the agriculture by addressing the needs of the individual states.
- Problem:
Agricultural fertile lands are often converted to non-agricultural land by the developers for the purpose of construction causing also distress to farmers. Farmers are often forced to sell their land and become landless labourers after some time.
Solutions:Enactments of strict law enforcement to stop this kind of misuse of agricultural land.
- Problems:
There is a conflict on pricing of the agricultural commodity between farmers’ and the consumers’perspectives. Farmers often do not get their cost price at the farmers’ gate level after harvesting because the Government wants to keep the price low to check the inflation. And urban consumers make a hue and cry when the prices of agricultural commodity go up.
Solutions:To overcome this situation,Government can subsidise the food which is being done even in many developed countries. Or can subsidise agriculture indirectly giving free input supply since as per the GATT signatory we can exceed subsidy in agriculture more than 10% of the value of gross agricultural output.
- Problem:
Benefit of incentives like crop insurance cannot be harnessed by many farmers because of the policy bottleneck. All crops are not notified as agricultural commodity crops. Farmers do cultivate many specialised crops like medicinal and aromatic crops which has fallen in the category of agricultural commodity, hence farmers cannot get the benefits associated with the agricultural commodity crops.
Solutions:These crops may be notified as agricultural commodity crops. A very simple analogy should be used to classify all the crops that are cultivated on agricultural field should be considered as agricultural commodity crops and benefit associated with these commodities must be extended to all farmers irrespective of their nature of crops.
Finally, I must say that till today India being an agriculturally depended country, there is no dependable agricultural policy. General attitude towards agriculture since the independence is also not as green as it should be. We must realize now that if we do not tight our belt now it will be difficult for feeding our ever growing population. Not only that a day will come, food will also either not be available in the international market to import or it will be so expensive and beyond our reach since world population is also exploding and already crossed 7.5 billion.
