Agricultural issues and Issues related to direct and indirect farm subsidies and minimum support price
Indian Economy and issues relating to planning, mobilization, of resources, growth, development and employment.
Agricultural Distress
The COVID-19 crisis is affecting rural India especially at a time when agriculture is already in a distress situation.
Agricultural distress Causing Migration
According to the 2011 census, 3.5 million migrants moved within the last one year due to economic reasons.
The corresponding numbers for the 2001 and 1991 census, were, respectively, 2.2 and 1.4 million.
Do You Know?
Majority of the migrant workers send 25 to 50 per cent of their monthly income to their families back home.
In Bihar, these remittances accounted for 35.6 per cent of gross state domestic product in 2011-12, up from 11.6 per cent in 2004-05
Issues with Agricultural Sector
Increasing Rural-Urban gap
In 2008, the rural-urban gap was at 45% in terms of average revenue — versus 10% for China and Indonesia.
The rural monthly per capita expenditure declined 8.8% from Rs 1,430 in 2011-12 to Rs 1,304 in 2017-18
In 2013-2019, the average agricultural GDP growth rate (driven by livestock) was 3.1%, much lower than the average GDP growth rate — 6.7%
The average growth of the crop sector, which accounts for two-thirds of the agricultural sector GDP, was 0.3 per cent.
Declining Landholding Size
Average landholding size of a household has shrunk to 1.1 ha in 2016 (Source: NABARD)
A farm household needs to have at least 1 ha of land to make ends meet, whereas the proportion of those owning less than one ha is 82.8%
37% of farm households owned land parcels of smaller than 0.4 ha
Another 30% of farm households holdings which between 0.41 and 1.0 ha.
Only 13% agricultural households owned landholdings bigger than 2 ha.
Irrigation has stagnated, with less than half of Indian farmland irrigated.
Rural India suffers from “urban consumer bias”: Government has kept food prices very low to spare urban consumers of price rise
Budget cuts have affected key agri-programmes such as the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, the Backward Regions Grant Fund as well as irrigation schemes (Integrated Watershed Management Programme)
Degradation in agricultural quality
Rise of monocultures based on the intensive use of chemical pesticides has reduced soil productivity
The level of water tables fell by 65 per cent in 10 years.
Nearly 30 per cent of India’s land has been degraded due to deforestation, intensive farming, soil erosion and groundwater depletion.
Increasing indebtedness of farmers
Over half of the farmers are indebted
The average loan amount outstanding for a farm household in India in 2017 was Rs 47,000.
More than 3,20,000 farmers committed suicide between 1995 and 2016 (NCRB data)
Rural Poverty
NSS data show that rural poverty rose about 4 percentage points between 2011-12 and 2017-18 to 30 per cent
Whereas urban poverty fell 5 percentage points over the same period to 9 per cent.
Way Forward
The issue of migrant workers during the crisis should open the eyes of policy makers about the need to make agriculture sector a priority
Agricultural sector should witness more investment to reduce the rural-urban gap
Need for agro-ecological transition as it is more bio-diverse in nature, makes the system more resilient, strengthen food security and provide a safety net for farmers
Connecting the dots:
Ashok Dalwai Committee on doubling of farmers’ income
