High Priority Areas in India
·
Government
should focus first on inputs for increasing agricultural productivity. Seeds,
soil health and water should be the priority for investment within inputs,.
·
Besides
increasing productivity, other goals should be improving the small and marginal
farmers’ access to credit, insurance and markets
·
Rain-fed
area should be the priority focus rather than the irrigated area since
two-thirds of India’s
agricultural land is rain-fed.
·
In terms
of regional focus, states like Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh,
Uttaranchal and Jammu & Kashmir should be prioritized. Also, nothing has
been done to improve the productivity in mountain regions, especially in Uttaranchal
and Jammu & Kashmir.
·
Agriculture
should be made sustainable and the foundation should be on a broad genetic
base. Narrow genetic base makes crops vulnerable to pests and diseases. Genetic
diversity provides resistance to pests and diseases and resilience to climate
change.
Agricultural Situation in Targeted States
·
Bihar has a lot of water resources, irrigation access and fertile soil. The
state is more a victim of bad governance (e.g., land reforms never happened in Bihar). Jharkhand, which was earlier a part of Bihar, requires much more attention as it has bad soil
and dearth of water resources.
·
Uttar Pradesh also has sufficient
access to irrigation and fertile soil. Focus should be on Eastern Uttar Pradesh
as Western UP is a green revolution area.
·
Odisha is underdeveloped but has
resources. The Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput (KBK) districts in Odisha are
together known as the starvation belt despite having enough rice production.
This is because majority of the rice produced is traded out.
Small and Marginal Farmers
·
Most of the farmers in rain-fed
areas are small and marginal farmers
·
Crops: The basket of small and marginal
farmers in rain-fed areas include only one crop – the kharif (summer) crop
which is mainly rice. No second crop is usually possible in rain-fed areas due
to low availability of water in the winter season. The basket of small and
marginal farmers in irrigated areas includes both a summer crop (mainly rice)
and a winter crop (mainly wheat, mustard, potato or vegetables)
·
Income: Income varies from state to state
and also dependent on the crops grown. But one trend which is uniform is that none
of the small and marginal farmers are able to have a surplus in India. Farmers
in irrigated areas are better off than farmers in rain-fed areas as they have
the buffer of second crop. Small and marginal farmers also work on large lands
as laborers ,especially during sowing, harvesting threshing etc., to earn extra
income.
·
Yield: Agricultural yield on a small
land is higher than a large land provided all inputs – credit, insurance, seeds,
water and good soil are available. This is because a small and marginal farmer
works on his own on a small land and therefore, dedication level is much higher
than working as a laborer on a large land. However, in India, small
and marginal farmers do not have required inputs to attain that yield.
Normally, small and marginal farmers have the worst soil. They require credit
to procure required inputs which is again not available.
·
Decline in cultivator population: It is
true that small and marginal farmers leave the land fallow due to lack of
inputs and work as agricultural laborers on large farms. This is one of the
prime reasons for increase in population of agricultural laborers and decline
in population of cultivators. Some small and marginal farmers even shift to
non-agricultural jobs.
·
The access of markets for small and
marginal farmers is crucial and should be looked into.
·
Livestock: Most small and marginal farmers keep
livestock. Thus, integrated farming is a
common way to survive for them. Credit and insurance is the key for integrated
farming to succeed.
·
Mechanization: Mechanization is important
for small and marginal farmers but not motorized mechanization. The focus
should not be on fossil fuels but equipments like solar pumps or treadle pumps.
However, mechanization displaces labor and any labor-displacing technologies
will put people out of work.
·
Co-operative Equipment
Park: Co-operative equipment parks should be promoted where a person should be
paid for maintaining and taking care of farm equipments. Small and marginal
farmers can then lease the equipments as and when required.
·
Co-operative Farming: Co-operatives
have failed in India
because farmers prefer cropping as individuals. Co-operative farming can work
if it has a flavor of both individual and collective farming – collective
farming. Farmers can continue to
cultivate as individuals and sell collectively.
Agricultural Extension
·
Agricultural extension services
require immediate attention
·
Replacing earlier agricultural
extension services (where extension officers used to visit the fields) with
ATMA (where farmers have to go to extension officers) has been disastrous. It
should be reversed as soon as possible.
·
There is no accountability under
ATMA. Farmers are not aware where ATMA offices are located. Besides, ATMA is a
den of corruption.
·
Young high school students can be
hired and trained to conduct extension programs
·
Programs should also focus on
skill building, so that farmers can themselves do the next level of processing
before selling
Seeds
·
Seed production should be
localized in order to increase the access of quality seeds in India.
·
Foundation seed can be given to
farmers to multiply
·
There are enough good quality
varieties in the major food crops ( with the exception perhaps of pulses). New varieties
need not be developed .Existing seeds varieties have enough genetic potential
to give high yields, if farmers are enabled to provide adequate inputs to their
fields.
·
Role of private sector in seed
production and distribution is limited unless they work with farmer interest in
mind. Raking in profits for themselves at the cost of the farmers is not
acceptable.
·
Private partnership is good if
they can scale up the capacity in rural areas. In many cases, private sector
indulges in contract farming and later backs off. For example, in Karnataka,
farmers dumped tomatoes on roads because the private sector backed off from the
contract. Private sector contracts should be carefully looked into and only
protected contracts should be allowed.
MGNREGA
·
MGNREGA is a populist program with no vision. The work
revolves around digging ditches. No productive work is done under MGNREGA, no
sensible infrastructure is created and no skill building takes place so the
people remain as unskilled labor.
·
MGNREGA has led to shortage of
agricultural labor and increase in negotiating power of agricultural labor.
·
Implementation of MGNREGA is
seriously affected by corruption. Workers are paid much lower than notified
wages and
Central Government Support
·
Central government has supported
the agriculture sector by launching programs and allotting funds to the sector.
However, all the funds are transferred directly to state governments for
implementation of the programs and not even half of the funds are utilized. As
a result, most of the programs that go from central government to state
governments fail.
·
Government is averse to working
with civil society, which is a silly and self defeating position. Role of civil society needs to be appreciated as they are in touch with both the government
and the farmers and can be the bridge between them. An international donor
organization can also work with the civil society. Civil societies bring in more
accountability than government agencies.
Market access
·
APMC has created more cronies and
middle men
·
With e-marketing today the
farmer’s access to markets everywhere is
easy and possible
·
A key area for government policy
and intervention is to train farmers to build value chains and provide linkages
to markets
GM Seeds
·
The way GM technology is
presently used in India
is risky.
·
For the use of GM seeds
1. Need should be assessed- which problems doe the farmer face ? Can these
be resolved by conventional breeding ? If not, which GM approach would be
feasible ? Where for instance was the need for .Bt brinjal ?
2. If the GM approach is chosen as the alternative solution, proper bio-safety
testing is a must before a GM crop could be introduced.
3. Proper biosafety testing is not being done because it costs money and
everyone is trying to cut corners. This is dangerous.
·
So far, it is the private players
which are creating the market in India. Monsanto has the two main
genes in use- Bt and HT. Their prime motive appears to be to license their technology to as many
agencies as possible. They do not assess farmers need and do not want to get into seed
production , especially in low production crops such as pulses .
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