By- Avik Chattopadhyay
Find the title offensive? You shouldn’t, for farming, or agriculture, in India is an financial exercise that’s neither revered, nor aspirational. It can be not economically viable and nonetheless is the final resort of the unemployed. It must be fashionable, aspirational, revered and vastly interesting, as quickly as doable. Therefore, the title!
In November 2014, I met Shri Rohtash Mal, ex managing director of Escorts Tractors and an entrepreneur within the area of farm mechanisation via “custom hiring centres”. I had the pleasure of working with him constructing his model “Samadhan” in Rajasthan. What made you permit a comfortable company job and enter this area, I requested him, early on in our engagement. “To make Indian farming sexy”, he stated.
Almost eight years later, on September 28, 2022, I attended the ETAuto Farm Equipment Summit. Sitting attentively via the assorted periods on know-how, product excellence and operational effectivity, the session that actually woke me up was the one by Dr C.R. Mehta of ICAR. He took us via a journey of how the precise know-how must be adopted to assist the farmer on the floor stage. This was about “customer intimacy”, past product, know-how and effectivity. This was about truly empathising with the farmer relatively than speaking to him from a pedestal. And I remembered Mr. Mal’s phrases!
Dr Mehta talked concerning the soul of farming. Everybody else was involved concerning the bodily points. And that’s precisely what’s mistaken about this exercise referred to as “farming” in India. The total eco-system across the farmer is simply involved with supplying with bodily implements and digital interfaces. Almost nobody invests any time in engaged on the emotional facet of farming, deeper than the tractor or rotavator into the psychological body of the particular person utilizing them.
I consciously and intentionally use the time period “farming” and never “agriculture” right here. The latter is about rising crops, fruit and veggies whereas the previous can be about flowers, fishes, poultry, livestock, bees and much more.
Some statistics to begin with
Farming employs round 45% of our working inhabitants and gives livelihood to 55% of the inhabitants. Yet it contributes solely 18% to our GDP. And the workforce engaged in farming is step by step lowering because the chart beneath exhibits.
About 146 million landholdings interact a workforce of 263 million folks, implying that roughly 1.8 individuals per farm. I’m not clear if this contains the contract and sharecroppers who return to their ‘homes’ a couple of times a 12 months for harvesting and extra incomes over their metropolis jobs. What is of significance is that 99 million of the landholdings [68%] are lower than 1 hectare [10,000 square metres / 2.47 acres].
Forty-three per cent of our complete land is arable vis-à-vis simply 11% as a world common. This makes us one of the vital fertile components of the world for occasions immemorial justifying why so many races, tribes and faiths wished to cool down right here.
Some myths to bust
Myth #1 – the contribution of farming to GDP is dropping. Many of us really feel that this sector just isn’t precious sufficient to place deal with and subsidise when required. Well, if electrical autos could be subsidised being a brand new pattern, so can farming and farm mechanisation.
This chart from MOSPI / Statista exhibits that the GVA has been rising yearly. Therefore the main focus and monetary assist is definitely bringing returns on the funding. Only if the degrees of mechanisation could be extra, the productiveness can be greater particularly from the marginal farmlands.
Myth #2 – our farmers usually are not productive sufficient. They use archaic strategies and usually are not able to spend money on fashionable applied sciences like different industries. Again, a stereotype primarily based on photographs of farmers created in Indian motion pictures lingering from the Sixties.
These two charts from an RBI Bulletin on Indian Agriculture launched in January 2022 present how productiveness has been rising aside from pulses and the Indian farmer is vastly aggressive compared with one within the US, Ukraine and Canada, among the most mechanised farming markets on the earth. Interestingly, nations with decrease land holdings appear to be extra productive.
Myth #3 – farming just isn’t fashionable sufficient. While the state of affairs in India just isn’t but supreme to make sure optimum output in opposition to the efforts put in, the typical mechanisation stage throughout all main crops in 2020-21, as per ICAR, stands at a wholesome 47%. Guess some sectors like textiles, footwear and some extra ‘urban’ jobs.
Key crops like rice and wheat do see a excessive stage of mechanisation. If the laggards like cotton and sugarcane make progress, farming will see a lot greater ranges of productiveness.
As the following two charts present, since 2016 we’re seeing rising gross sales of equipment although the Covid interval information just isn’t but with us. Going by the gross sales of tractors in 2020, the pattern needs to be upwards for equipment as effectively with a dip in 2022.
Mechanisation, similar to automobile penetration, has fairly some technique to go if we evaluate ourselves with Brazil. [Car penetration in India is at 26 per 1000 compared with 470 per 1000 in Brazil!]
So, what’s going to make farming horny?
Given my expertise of getting carried out initiatives on this sector over the past seven years, I imagine there are six particular steps that may assist remodel farming right into a occupation that’s interesting to the youthful technology in addition to revered for the current farming neighborhood. Farming must be taken up as a occupation and never as a final resort, out of selection and never out of compulsion.
1.Start respecting the farmer
When was the final time the typical Indian thought concerning the farmer? During the Farm Laws agitation. They agitated on the borders of the hallowed nationwide capital and we trolled and demonised them over social media, tv and different digital platforms.
This neighborhood serves the nation as devoted and selfless because the soldier. I bear in mind a farmer in Kota telling me, “Only when you do not get your ‘roti’ on your dinner plate one night will you remember us…and even then you will only curse us and not ask why the roti could not reach you…”
The farmer asks for rights and safety simply as college students, troopers, industrial staff and medical doctors do. Our mind-set has to alter in accepting them as social equals and never as vassals working for masters.
2.Cooperatives, collectives and CHCs
Given the predominance of marginal farms [below 1 hectare] the options need to be thought bottom-up. Typical top-down considering can not work in India. We shunned cooperatives and collectives as old-world ‘leftist’ ideas. They had failed not due to the precept however the corruption. Cooperatives have created the Indian dairy business. They can remodel the remainder of farming too by integrating all of the marginal farms into collective plans and actions.
Custom hiring centres, subsequently, are the necessity of the hour throughout the nation as bigger components of our arable land are of low or very low productiveness. The CHCs will guarantee entry to world-class mechanisation and know-how to the small and marginal farmers.
Mr. Mal had projected the necessity for 250,000 CHCs throughout the nation in 2015. Apart from non-public entrepreneurs like him beginning Samadhan, tractor makers began their CHC networks like Mahindra’s Trringo and TAFE’s J-Farm. Some state governments have additionally taken up the duty themselves just like the Rythu Bharosa Kendras in Andhra Pradesh [plan of building 11,000 in total]. Use of mecnahisation via CHCs has improved the soya bean manufacturing within the arid belts of Maharashtra by 15%-17%. And there are millions of related proofs of efficiency throughout the nation.
3.“Atmanirbhar” built-in farming
When Hare Krishna Konar and Benoy Chaudhury began India’s first organised land reforms motion in 1967 in West Bengal, they realised that the small and marginal farmers needed to be given a template of built-in farming that features sources of sustainable revenue aside from climate-dependent crops and greens, like livestock, fishery, honey, poultry and in addition rudimentary meals processing. The success of “Operation Barga” created a blueprint for contemporary farming.
The ICAR has modernised the identical within the type of NICRA [National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture] from 2011. Model NICRA villages are being arrange within the 100 most climatically susceptible districts in India. When the federal government talks of being “Atmanirbhar” as an economic system, it should have farming as an integral part of the nationwide mission and never solely the ‘fancier’ points of producing, IT and analysis.
4.Focus on girls and SHGs
About 100 million girls are engaged in farming proper now and the quantity is projected to develop to 120 million by 2047. ICAR initiatives that there might be extra girls engaged in farming than males within the subsequent 25 years because the latter hold shifting to the cities for city jobs whereas the womenfolk proceed with farming. This permits two revenue sources for a big a part of the Indian inhabitants.
In addition, the Self Help Group motion has grown now to round 7.9 million teams participating greater than 86 million girls throughout rural India beneath the National Rural Livelihoods Mission as per authorities information [SHG Report (nrlm.gov.in)], led by West Bengal. This has been one in all India’s greatest achievements for the reason that formation of SEWA by the famend social activist Smt. Ela Bhatt in 1972 in Ahmedabad.
Women will guarantee farming turns into sustainable, worthwhile, and progressive. This business is greatest managed of their arms as they greatest perceive find out how to make villages affluent.
5.Storage up, meals inflation down
The lack of meals storage infrastructure even after 75 years of independence is one issue that cripples the farmer on the one hand forcing him / her to promote produce at below-cost charges and the malnourished however to stay so.
The above chart exhibits the pathetic state of affairs of solely round 15% of all perishable manufacturing being saved correctly after 75 years of independence and planning. Only 6 states our of 16 within the chart retailer greater than 10% of what they produce. Unless this improves, farmer bankruptcies and suicides won’t ever see any discount. And that necessitates subsidies and large write-offs hurting your entire tax-paying inhabitants. The subsequent time you criticise farm subsidies, flip your deal with the politician-middleman nexus that by no means constructed a correct meals storage infrastructure.
The different issue that cripples the farmer is meals inflation. In reality, lack of storage and meals inflation work in tandem. Being overdependent on pure seasonal rain, any climatic disturbances and lack of storage disrupt the meals provide chain. The extra organised sectors like dairy, cereals and fruits see much less volatility in costs whereas the unorganised ones like greens, sugarcane and pulses play havoc with the price of dwelling. The charts beneath say the identical story.
6.Create nationwide recognition platforms
If the movie and sports activities fraternities and the defence forces can have their devoted nationwide awards, why not the farmers? Do now we have a Rashtriya Krishi Samman? Do we also have a nationwide day for the farmers?
We solely do lip service once we say “Jai kisaan” however truly want “Jaaye kisaan” [let the farmer get lost]. Basically, the remainder of the nation takes the farmer without any consideration and treats one on the backside of the socio-economic chain, accepted as poor, uneducated, disempowered and subsequently to be left to at least one’s lot.
The authorities too just isn’t a lot better, by no means bringing the farmer to the forefront on nationwide platforms or creating particular ones for them.
Till the time the basic respect for the farmer doesn’t develop, the act of farming is one which the farmer himself / herself will need to run away from. And the youthful technology within the villages will rush to the cities so as to add to the “gig economy”.
India has been famously referred to as the “Sone ki chidiya” [bird of gold]. That was not as a result of this was a land of jewels and treasures buried within the floor. That was as a result of this land is likely one of the most fertile on the earth making certain golden crops for hundreds of years. In the 1967 Hindi movie Upkaar, when Mahendra Kapoor sang, “Mere desh ki dharti sona ugle, ugle here moti…” [this soil of my land produces gold, diamonds and pearls] he meant it!
Disclaimer:(The creator is co-creator of Expereal India. Also, he’s former head of selling, product planning and PR at Volkswagen India.)
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