{"id":50606,"date":"2019-07-26T19:00:34","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T13:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogadmin.forumias.com\/?p=50606"},"modified":"2019-07-26T16:24:52","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T10:54:52","slug":"7-pm-opportunity-to-reform-agriculture-missed-26th-july-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-opportunity-to-reform-agriculture-missed-26th-july-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"7 PM | Opportunity to reform agriculture missed |26th July, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Context:<\/strong> structural issues in\nagriculture<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Present scenario of Indian agriculture:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The aggregate Share of Agriculture and Allied Sectors, Including agribusiness, domesticated animals, and ranger service and fishery sub segments as far as rate of GDP is 13.9 percent during 2018-19 at 2004-05 prices.\u00a0<\/li><li>Indian is an agriculture based country, where more than 50% of population is depend on agriculture. <\/li><li>India is the world\u2019s\u00a0largest producer<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>of pulses, rice, wheat, spices and spice products. India has many areas to choose for business such as dairy, meat, poultry, fisheries and food grains etc.<\/li><li>India has emerged as the second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Structural issues of Indian agriculture:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Water concerns:<\/strong> agriculture users use 80% of the water resources in India, out of which\n60% goes into paddy and sugar cultivation. From independence onwards mainly\nfocussed on constructing large scale irrigation projects and flood irrigation.<\/li><li><strong>Chemical farming:<\/strong> before independence agriculture is predominantly organic and localised\nin nature. After independence due to rising population government focussed only\nchemical farming, which is high- capital intensive and lead to destruction of\nsoil fertility. Even this year budget announces around RS 79,996crore on\nfertilizer subsidy<\/li><li><strong>Rural roads:<\/strong> Only 74% of villages are connected to an\nall-weather road with more than half (51%) of the country\u2019s small villages\n(populations of less than 250) adrift from the road network. Lack of connectivity\nwill further deprive agricultural growth.<\/li><li>About 50%\nof all new road construction since 2014 has been concentrated in just five\nstates-Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. In terms of\nvillage connectivity to roads, the North-East lags behind. Even regional wise\ninequality prevails in rural road development.<\/li><li><strong>Terms of trade:<\/strong> the terms of trade are unfavorable to a farmer. That is the\ndifference between the input prices that farmer buys and the prices that\nfarmers sell at is not in the farmer&#8217;s favor, therefore, the farmer&#8217;s income\nkeeps falling.<\/li><li><strong>e-NAM:<\/strong> was intended as a\nsignificant advance in agricultural marketing and trade, but not all states\nhave amended their APMC acts to be able to join eNAM. It is also inaccessible\nto small and marginal farmers who make up 86 per cent of India&#8217;s farming\npopulation. There is still no mechanism to assess quality<\/li><li><strong>Lending:<\/strong> the banks are hesitating to\nincrease farm lending due to the high cost of reaching farmers, high rate of\nNon Performing Assets (NPAs) and threat of loan write-offs. Still majority of\nfarmers are taking loans from moneylenders.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Short-term\nmeasures of government:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Minimum Support Price (MSP):<\/strong> Minimum Support Price was\nincreased to one and a half times the farmer&#8217;s cost of production. The devil,\nthough, lay in the detail, viz., the method of calculating MSP. <\/li><li>While farmers&#8217; organizations\nhave been demanding the C2 method of calculation in which land, rent,\nsupervision and management costs are included in the cost of production, the\nNDA government is using the A2+FL method (actual paid-out costs plus an imputed\nvalue of unpaid family labor).<\/li><li><strong>Prime Minister Kisan Samman scheme:<\/strong> direct cash transfer of 6000RS to farmers account\nunder some conditions. 6000RS covers only 13-15% of rural farmer income. This\nshort term measure will not improve the farmer\u2019s plight.<\/li><li><strong>Loan waivers<\/strong>: by the state governments like Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra\nand Madhya Pradesh covers only some farmers only. Without structural measures\nloan waivers only a short term measure.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Structural measures to rejuvenate Indian agriculture:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Water productivity:<\/strong> instead of increasing yield per acre, there should be focus on\nincreasing productivity per litre of water. It is time now to move Indian\nagriculture from flood irrigation to micro irrigation methods like drip,\nsprinkler methods. These methods can save up to 60% of water and also help in\npreventing pest incidence<\/li><li><strong>Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF):<\/strong> economic survey 2018-19 reports that 1.6 lakh farmers\nfollowed ZBNF. The government advised the farmers to adopt zero-budget farming\nto double their income. So the governments should take proper measures to\npenetrate ZBNF throughout India<\/li><li><strong>Allied sectors:<\/strong> focus of the government should also on the allied sectors like\nfisheries, poultry and dairy farming. Allied sectors contribution to\nagriculture GDP is almost 25%. So government should take measures to supplement\nallied farming to crop farming to improve the income of farmers.<\/li><li><strong>Lending:<\/strong> banks\nare hesitating to provide loans to farmers. This reluctance of banks should\ntaken away by the government by announcing a first-loss guarantee to banks on\nagricultural lending<\/li><li><strong>APMCs act: <\/strong>to improve the farm gate prices, state governments should revamp the\nAgriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMCs) as soon as possible.<\/li><li><strong>National agriculture council:<\/strong> agriculture is a state subject, so to improve the\nplight of farmers and increase in the growth in agriculture sector need of the\nhour. So government should create a national agriculture council on the lines\nof GST council.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Way forward: <\/strong>Government should facilitate and support\ncommunity level action by private voluntary organizations, including farmers\ngroups aimed at improving food security, reducing poverty, and assuring\nsustainability in the management of natural resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindubusinessline.com\/opinion\/columns\/opportunity-to-reform-agriculture-missed\/article28712060.ece\">https:\/\/www.thehindubusinessline.com\/opinion\/columns\/opportunity-to-reform-agriculture-missed\/article28712060.ece<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context: structural issues in agriculture Present scenario of Indian agriculture: The aggregate Share of Agriculture and Allied Sectors, Including agribusiness, domesticated animals, and ranger service and fishery sub segments as far as rate of GDP is 13.9 percent during 2018-19 at 2004-05 prices.\u00a0 Indian is an agriculture based country, where more than 50% of population&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-opportunity-to-reform-agriculture-missed-26th-july-2019\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">7 PM | Opportunity to reform agriculture missed |26th July, 2019<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":49370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-pm","category-public","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/7-PM.png?fit=1000%2C500&ssl=1","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704764605},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}