Market Driven Agriculture

Is Market Driven Production System Sustainable in Agriculture!

Post green revolution, agriculture is becoming more and more complicated and technology savvy enterprise. Technology has made vast invasions on production systems. Latest advances have made possible even simulation of required environment for growing the crops. Greenhouse technology, for example, makes year round cultivation of crops possible. Soilless culture such as hydroponics and rock wool give an illusion of agriculture without natural medium anywhere in the world. Thanks to corporate sector, diverse crops and varieties are finding places throughout the world like globalised, manufactured goods.

Globalised market tendencies have opened up flood gates for various food produces and products. Contract farming and buy back arrangements are the buzz words of cash rich farmers. Export boom is driving big business houses to build infrastructures for commercial enterprises in agriculture.

But a close analysis of the ground situation gives a shocking picture of agriculture and horticulture in India. Most of the export dependent floriculture units are facing closures either due to crash in export market or increasing cost of cultivation or quality problems as a result of pests and diseases. Farmers rushing to market driven crops like vanilla, ginger, perishable western vegetables, etc are in a soup as a result of unstable market tendencies.
Intensive, modern technologies have failed to give long term returns due to increasing cost of production and degradation of agro ecology. Medium and large farmers are facing debt trap as a result of irreversible stages they have reached in farming systems.

Besides, agro biodiversity is the biggest casualty of the modern market driven agriculture due to intensive monoculture package by the technologists. Degradation of agro ecology, soil and as a result, increasing intensity of pests and diseases is adding to very high cost of production. Lack of adaptable varieties and hybrids has made the situation worse for farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs.

Fluctuation in the market demand and prices has made the profession a vicious circle of exploitation and distress. This is adding to the woes of landless laborers also in the rural areas due to worsening situation of the farming community. As a result, farmers’ apathy towards farming, abandoning of profession and migration of rural population is the common scenario in the country. Today, rural India is a mirror image of unsustainable agriculture economy and lost hopes of the future.