Agriculture or Farm Crises in India

Introduction

India, predominantly known as the farmer’s land has a prominent history of agriculture. Farming in Indian Subcontinent dates back to the existence of Indus Valley Civilisation.

With observing pertinent growth and technological development over years, presently India ranks 2nd in worldwide agrarian production.
The farm sector employs the maximum number of people in India.
India has a Gross Cropped Area of 196.5 million hectares, in 2020 and the Net Sown Area of 140 million hectares.
As per the World Bank Data, 2014, 34% of Indian Agro-land is irrigated.
32% of the total agricultural output comes from Animal Husbandry Sector.
The Agriculture Sector growth has risen from 1.2% in 2015-16 to 4.2% in 2019-20.
Horticulture crops share 10% of the total gross cropped area. Project CHAMAN has been initiated for horticulture.
In the production of medicinal and aromatic plants, India holds 7% shares of the total world production.
One of the fastest growing industries in India is that of Aquaculture and Catch Fishery.

However, Indian Agriculture has witnessed and rooted various distressed crises, over varied periods of time.

Pre-Independence Era

The British Invasion into the Indian Subcontinent and further Colonisation resulted in extreme Commercialisation of Agriculture. Following were the key features of Colonised Agriculture in India:
Scattered Land Ownership: With a growing population and commercialist pressure from the Imperial Government, the land ownership patterns were fragmented.
Antiquated Technology: Lack of machine ware and technological accessibility slowed down the Industrialisation of Agricultural Products and overall Farm Growth.
Lessened Productivity: Heavy unplanned commercialization and forced plantations led to the degradation of agricultural land. This further led to lesser productivity of both labour and resources.
Tussles among people: British introduced many reforms as Zamindari System which gave the landowners a higher power set over the farm laborers. This led to constant feuds between the two social groups.
Unstable Irrigation: Indian Agriculture was dependent on primitive forms of irrigation – like, rivers. This added to the low productivity induced in the farming sector.
With independence, came Partition which gave away a huge faction of fertile land to Pakistan. This led to economic loss in the farming sector.

Post-Independence Era (1947-1999)

Until the mid-1960s, India was dependent upon imports to aid food grain procurement.
However, drought in 1965-66 elevated the extensive agriculture planning in India. This ushered in the introduction of the Green Revolution.

Green Revolution

The Indian Government adopted Green Revolution in 1965, under the guidance of M.S. Swaminathan.
This revolution empowered India to rise from a food-deficit nation to an agricultural economy.
The period of the movement is recorded as 1965-1978.
The revolution focused on the aspects of High Yielding Variety (HYV) Seeds, Mechanisation of Agriculture, Stabilised Irrigation and rooting the usage of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
The advancements soared the total food grain production in India, especially Northern India. States like Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh were best benefitted from the policy.

Even though Green Revolution hastened the process of self-sufficiency, it could not bring about equity concerning the individual development of farmers. Irrigation facilities like groundwater, tube wells, led to extensive wastage of water. Extensive usage of chemicals over the soil further deferred the soil quality.

However, with the introduction of liberalization and removal of trade barriers, the Indian farmers faced fierce competition in the global and local markets.

The present times (the 2000s and later)

After facing fierce competition in the global market and individual feuds, farmers have displayed their criticism in various forms of dismay and protests, over time.
They have been facing extreme distress in sales of agro-products.

The farmers have been facing these issues due to the following reasons:

Non-inclusiveness of Farmer’s Welfare: A varsity of government policies lacked in considering farmer’s welfare. They were dedicated to food security and trade growth, avoiding the spectrums of individual income.
Reducing farm-land size: With a growing population and internal family feuds, the average farm-land holding size is being reduced drastically. This further lowers individual productivity.
Dependence on natural phenomena: Even today, a huge fraction of farmers practice traditional methods of farming. This leads to dependence on rain and climate. Undue rainfall and climate distress add to the agricultural distress.
Distress in sales: Collapsing prices of agro-products in the global market and increased cheaper imports lead to disturbed domestic prices. This induces unstable revenues for an average harvest.
Lack of formal crediting: Farmers tend to depend upon the informal sector for credits, which induce debt traps. This has created a huge problem of farmers’ suicides.
Disrupted supply chains: India houses a fragmented supply chain due to insufficient marketing, storage, and transport infrastructure.
Other issues: There has been a noticeable deficiency in the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act. Furthermore, due to the profiteering by middlemen, the farmers are at a loss, and consumers face price hikes.

The Government’s Approach to Agrarian Distress in India

The Indian Government has recognized agriculture to be a traditional strength of the Indian economy. With time, it has introduced various schemes, policies, and reforms to restructure the agrarian crises.

Currently, the government is mechanizing the following frameworks:

Recently, the government has introduced various uniform policies, such as Soil Health Card, Neem-Coated Urea, PM Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), Electronic National Agricultural Market (e-NAM), PM Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY) etcetera.
The government currently aims to double the income of farmers by 2022-23. This is to be done to ensure equity and parity among farmers.
To facilitate more formal credit outsourcing, the agriculture sector is a Priority Sector Lending (PSL) component.
The government has offered a fertilizer subsidy along with the PDS food subsidy.
It focuses on staking the MSP 50% more than the production cost.
The government has also planned ‘Operation Greens’ which shall run parallel to the lines of ‘Operation Floods’.

Resources

– Priyal Jain.

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