Farmers should stop playing the victim card and adopt progressive cultivation practices, integrated agriculture solutions, crop diversification, etc.
I have been involved in agriculture and crop protection since 1966, and in academics since 1987, sensitising MBA students about rural India, about its diversity. I have interacted with farmers on their farms across India, especially in the northern belts of cotton, paddy, wheat, and sugarcane. I have dealt with dealers and aartias’ and shroffs, and commission agents who dominate the money spends for cash crops, lend at 2% p.a. interest, barter produce, provide inputs, and have for generations been the central Bhagwan (God) of the farming community, for all his concerns, from marriages to machinery, from elections to health. Historically, after partition, feudalism gave way to land reforms; land ceilings; and governments intervened to support farmers with subsidies on electricity, fertilisers, and waivers of loans due to floods and droughts. Wheat, rice and sugarcane came under annual government buying programs, through use of minimum support pricing, initially arbitrarily, later using the Swaminathan Commission proposals.
While Jawaharlal Nehru and later governments gave huge attention to industrialization, institution building, agriculture remained backward, and a victim arena that housed the “annadatas” and the vote banks, with income tax on the segment, and other levies, being exempted. Continued use of old cultivation methods and tillage have shrunk the water table (1 meter annually), and crop diversification initiatives are a far cry. The inheritance laws have fostered the partition of land, and today marginal farmers own on an average 1.08 hectares of cultivable land per capita and a majority less than 0.5 ha. Even with the best inputs and yields, with support pricing, such farmers cannot find profitability in their operations. They lose annually. They borrow, lose more and borrow more. Aartias and commission agents have a field day. Everything comes out of perpetual indebtedness. For tractors, mechanization, pumps, tillers etc. Farmers need electricity and water but say “no” to smart meters. Now the sons of this generation do not want to enter farming, so there is no succession for old age farmers; thus the sons migrate, land gets sold, and landless farmers contractually cultivate crops on fixed rates per season, that they give to landowners.
These farm workers want ESI, social security, minimum wages, expansion of MGNREGS, removal of GST, policy on migrant workers, pension, waiver of loans worth Rs 18,000 crores, and much more. Above all, they demand MSP to be legalised for all crops, maybe 23 of them, and notifications issued. Leave WTO too, if you please, India.
Agriculture, driven by technology like AI, blockchain, automation, robotics, satellite and drones, sensors and drip irrigation, electronic tillers, seed dressers and hybrid seeds, and such initiatives have ushered in Green Revolution 0.2, post the late Dr Swaminathan’s immense contributions to wheat varieties, and use of chemical weed control in the 1980s. Smart and precision agriculture is the call of the times, and farmers productivity organizations and KVKs aided by E-NAM, and mandi reforms, are the vehicles to consolidate fragmented land, use new technology, provide inputs, give advice, and help in distribution of produce through pricing options. Biologicals, gene editing, crop rotation, stress and resistance management, use of organic natural products are on the anvil to fight climate change and droughts, to ensure healthier yields and better outputs. Farm to fork policies such as farm income funds can lead to stabilized pricing situations in abnormal times. Introducing legalised MSP in its present form is a disaster in the making, and mitigating risks to farmers is a more prudent suggestion. The MSP formula of the old should be dispensed with, and a new look at current costs, inflation, crops, yields, market prices, costs of transportation, segregation, etc., should be done based on so much new knowledge and experience on how MSP works, correctly aligned, to what the farmers want today. Announcing MSP every season is a good precedent, and this mechanism could find legal support, not the C2+50, but the annual review of MSP of selected crops, based on parameters. A safety net for farmers for fluctuating prices is essential, so that an equitable return through fair mechanism can be ensured in falling market conditions. In fact, many farmers have received sums in addition to MSP in the last decade. New conditions such as climate change, floods, droughts etc., demand flexibility, not rigid legislation that ties everyone down in shackles. The root cause of farm losses are small land holdings and rural indebtedness, and the dominance of a plethora of middlemen. There is the need to get out of the way the middlemen who suck blood. After agreed crop costs are accounted, add about 30% profit+ and reimburse dues in 30 days of produce procurement. Annual review should revisit the MSP policy, crop yields, technological impact, success and failure stories of FPOs and KVKs, and then in the budget in February each year, incorporate targeted MSP and other farmer safety net solutions for the financial year. Discourage water intensive crop cultivation. Extending MSP to other crops means more money and impending failure. Already the government has covered five crops in MSP, for a period of five-years, an offer made recently which the farmers rejected.
Mandi dynamics need reform from segregation, sorting, storage, cold chains and aggregators manipulating prices with wholesalers in mandis for marginal farmer produce. The poor man is conned and can only shake his head in despair and continuing agony! Maybe, a direct income support based on some formula will be a better option than guaranteeing everything. Doubling farmers’ income, despite NITI Aayog efforts, has not taken off, as expected. Because agriculture, the way it is managed today, is unprofitable, and that’s a given, barring for about 8-10% of large landowner farmers, or vineyard and orchard owners, etc., who also have multiple businesses. Plantation crops have another story to tell. Sugarcane farmers are crying forever. Contract farming is far and few in between—Pepsi and such. AgTech startups are increasingly visible—do they have farmer’s economics in mind or just want to become unicorns on broking funds? Will they become technological blood suckers of tomorrow? Water and irrigation management has yet to achieve infrastructural scale; and the rural changing demographics are oriented to non-farm income generation, as the rural youth shuns farming. The C2+50 formula propagated by Swaminathan Commission needs a fresh look, and a pragmatic approach that segments NSEW agricultural agro-climatic geographical zones and addresses the Ag issues of each zone through revised MSP mechanism for selected crops. The MSP policy as it stands is obsolete due adverse financial and productivity impacts on agriculture.
Democracy allows the farmers the right to protest; but the use of tractors and a militant attitude backed by politics put ordinary citizens into disarray, use up scarce resources and put lives in jeopardy, so are a strict “no”.
The world is changing, and under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India too is ready to grow faster, thus ensuring healthy transformation in social, economic and political outlooks for the country. An economic multiplier has set in, and India’s political-cum-economic climate is ripe and warm; the youth is the driver; unity is the call; cohesiveness in execution of policy is the need of the hour. Farmers should stop playing the victim card and try to understand and adopt progressive cultivation practices, integrated agriculture solutions, crop diversification. They should work together with FOs and KVKs under an income support policy agreed between them and the government, which includes amended MSP and other proposals that are accepted by stakeholders.
This article is not an expert solution to farmers’ woes, rather it touches on broader issues with a cry that begs agriculture in India to align itself with the changing global and Indian scenario. Progressive and new breed of emerging farmers and influencers, ought to make the next decade their shining journey of positive change, one that improves the earnings and quality of life of marginal farmers and landless farm labour. It’s a top priority for all stakeholders to help foster winds of change with open hearts and mind, based on facts, education and prudence. The questions are age old, but the answers need to be new.
Chander Sabharwal is senior professor of rural marketing and business advisor.