Agriculture Scenario in India
During my professional experience in agricultural field, I have been trying to understand and analyze the factors affecting the upliftment of rural community and urban agricultural enterprises in India. In spite of much-publicized Green Revolution in 1960’s and Horticultural Revolution in1980’s, the farming community’s socio-economic status either remained stagnant or has been deteriorating. Imagine the suicide death of thousands of farmers every year in a country where agriculture is the backbone of the economy and with more than two thirds of the population engaged in agriculture. More distressing is the very low productivity level in almost all the crops compared to other countries of the world.
The successive governments in independent India have never considered rural economy seriously. Planning has been poor in this sector. As a result, large sections of the farming community find agriculture a non-profitable enterprise and are migrating to urban areas in search of employment. There are alarming instances of distress selling of land by the farmers in the recent years.
The reasons are many
· There is a mismatch between the production, supply and requirement in market for agricultural commodities
· Unorganized production without any public policy based on food requirement of the country where as storage is pathetically organized witnessing over 30-40% of losses quite oftenly.
· Poor organization of the supply chain and distribution
· Lack of processing industry back up
· Poor post-harvest handling and storage
· Many a times, it is untimely production resulting in glut in the commodity market causing destruction of a large quantity of perishable produce or shortage situations.
This unorganized production where farmer is loosing, with tremendous depletion of natural resources is a result of unstable market tendencies. This is responsible for large-scale futile utilization of industrial inputs, which in turn makes use of non-renewable energy and raw materials.
India, being a diverse agro-climatic region, needs to evolve a comprehensive plan of cropping systems, supply chain and market management. Cropping pattern and production have to be planned as per the prevailing agro-climatic conditions.
Development Approaches
Sustainability and endogenous development oriented policies are the key to make it a viable enterprise. Technology has to be adaptable to the local/prevailing agro climatic, soil, water and cultural conditions to make it sustainable. Development approach devoid of endogenous angle needs creation of ideal/artificial conditions which is not practical and sustainable in agriculture particularly under such diverse conditions as Indian. Failure of the hybrid seed technology is the living example for the lack of endogenous approach.
Endogenous and sustainable approaches need to be adopted in other sectors also like promoting cropping pattern/production systems, supply chain management, distribution and marketing. The current cropping patterns are driven by market forces which are volatile and unreliable. In fact, market forces need to be driven by the production systems which are more sustainable and stable. They need to be decentralized involving local governing bodies so that market remains stable without bullish tendencies. Centralized marketing approaches are the major factors creating the unreliable situations forcing the farming community to adopt monoculture and intensive agriculture methods leading to glut conditions or shortage situations. This has impact on the farming community’s response on the ground making the agriculture an unsustainable enterprise.
During my professional experience in agricultural field, I have been trying to understand and analyze the factors affecting the upliftment of rural community and urban agricultural enterprises in India. In spite of much-publicized Green Revolution in 1960’s and Horticultural Revolution in1980’s, the farming community’s socio-economic status either remained stagnant or has been deteriorating. Imagine the suicide death of thousands of farmers every year in a country where agriculture is the backbone of the economy and with more than two thirds of the population engaged in agriculture. More distressing is the very low productivity level in almost all the crops compared to other countries of the world.
The successive governments in independent India have never considered rural economy seriously. Planning has been poor in this sector. As a result, large sections of the farming community find agriculture a non-profitable enterprise and are migrating to urban areas in search of employment. There are alarming instances of distress selling of land by the farmers in the recent years.
The reasons are many
· There is a mismatch between the production, supply and requirement in market for agricultural commodities
· Unorganized production without any public policy based on food requirement of the country where as storage is pathetically organized witnessing over 30-40% of losses quite oftenly.
· Poor organization of the supply chain and distribution
· Lack of processing industry back up
· Poor post-harvest handling and storage
· Many a times, it is untimely production resulting in glut in the commodity market causing destruction of a large quantity of perishable produce or shortage situations.
This unorganized production where farmer is loosing, with tremendous depletion of natural resources is a result of unstable market tendencies. This is responsible for large-scale futile utilization of industrial inputs, which in turn makes use of non-renewable energy and raw materials.
India, being a diverse agro-climatic region, needs to evolve a comprehensive plan of cropping systems, supply chain and market management. Cropping pattern and production have to be planned as per the prevailing agro-climatic conditions.
Development Approaches
Sustainability and endogenous development oriented policies are the key to make it a viable enterprise. Technology has to be adaptable to the local/prevailing agro climatic, soil, water and cultural conditions to make it sustainable. Development approach devoid of endogenous angle needs creation of ideal/artificial conditions which is not practical and sustainable in agriculture particularly under such diverse conditions as Indian. Failure of the hybrid seed technology is the living example for the lack of endogenous approach.
Endogenous and sustainable approaches need to be adopted in other sectors also like promoting cropping pattern/production systems, supply chain management, distribution and marketing. The current cropping patterns are driven by market forces which are volatile and unreliable. In fact, market forces need to be driven by the production systems which are more sustainable and stable. They need to be decentralized involving local governing bodies so that market remains stable without bullish tendencies. Centralized marketing approaches are the major factors creating the unreliable situations forcing the farming community to adopt monoculture and intensive agriculture methods leading to glut conditions or shortage situations. This has impact on the farming community’s response on the ground making the agriculture an unsustainable enterprise.
1 comment:
Congratulations! You guys are doing great work and need of the day. Feel like eating ragi rotti and chatnye one a week atleast. Keep it up and all the best.
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