Farm tools can improve the conditions of poor landless agricultural laborers

Source: Down to Earth

Relevance: Measures to improve the plight of landless agricultural laborers

Synopsis: Majority of those engaged in farming are landless agricultural laborers. A course of action for improving their financial and economic condition.

Landless Agricultural laborers

Landless agricultural laborers are the ones who invest their time in growing crops on others’ farms. They don’t have any stake-holding in farm assets.

Why should we focus on landless agricultural laborers?

In agriculture, labor is an important component, but is usually not under consideration most of the time.

• Landless agricultural labor is a vital factor in agricultural production. These laborers’ productivity and earnings are important determinants of the level of economic development.
• Also, they form the bulk of those engaged in farming. At present, the latest census data (2011) a total of 263 million persons (26.3 crores) households are involved in farming activities. Out of this only 119 million persons are land-owning farmers while 144 million are landless workers and peasants. In other words, the number of landless farm workers and landless peasants is significantly higher than those of land-owning farmers.

Is asset-holding a solution?

The following example shows the impact of asset-holding (farm tools in this case) on landless agricultural laborers.

• Location: It was done in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra. The area is predominantly tribal. Landless agricultural laborers routinely migrate from the district in search of work due to lack of availability of rural credit as well as lack of employment opportunities in villages.
• What was done?: In 2019-20, the Development Support Centre (DSC), a resource-based organization, decided to ensure basic farm assets to landless laborers with fund support from a number of corporate social responsibility funds.
  • Some 528 farm toolkit sets including harvester sickles, weeding sickles, hoes, 375 battery spray pumps, and 480 seed dibblers were given to landless farm laborers and small and marginal farmers in Nandurbar and Nawapur blocks in Maharashtra.
  • The farm toolkits are outfitted with high-quality equipment sets, with advanced technology that guarantees a quality output beyond manual yield.
• Aim: The development of assets for landless agriculture laborers while promoting access to farm tools and technologies for small and marginal farmers at the same time.
• Impact:
  • Cumulative growth on an increasing number of workdays, with a higher order of labor productivity and degree of motivation
  • Improved quality of labor to farm when one is equipped with his / her own farm tools.
  • Higher demand for labor and 20% more earning days to the landless laborers in a single crop cycle. This implies that now they have the potential to earn an optimum surplus over and above what they survive on.
  • Another observation was that the laborers enhanced their investment from these returns. The proportion of re-investments made from the new income earned through original investment was 11-14% more in the project area. The beneficiaries were also found saving some of their income for emergencies in the future.