{"id":52218,"date":"2019-09-16T19:00:24","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T13:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogadmin.forumias.com\/?p=52218"},"modified":"2019-09-16T17:01:52","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T11:31:52","slug":"7-pm-from-plate-to-plough-the-right-to-choose-16th-september-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-from-plate-to-plough-the-right-to-choose-16th-september-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"7 PM |From plate to plough: the right to choose | 16th September, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Context:<\/strong>\nsignificance of Zero Budget Natural Farming and direct cash transfer of\nsubsidies in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Governments\nin both developed and developing countries intervene in agriculture with a view\nto achieving a wide range of economic and social objectives. The reasons for\ngovernment intervention are diverse and varied. <\/li><li>Some\nof the most cited reasons for intervention are self sufficiency, employment\ncreation, support small-scale producers for adopting modern technologies and\ninputs, reduce price instability and improve the income of farm households. <\/li><li>This\nintervention can take a number of forms such as domestic policies like price\nsupport programmes, direct payments, and input subsidies to influence the cost\nand availability of farm inputs, like credit, fertilizers, seeds, irrigation\nwater, etc. <\/li><li>Of\nall domestic support instruments in agriculture, input subsidies and product\nprice support are the most common. It is, therefore, not surprising that\ngovernments in developing countries are promoting use of fertilizers through\nvarious policy instruments including subsidies.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Fertilizer\nsubsidy in India and issues:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Indian fertilizer industry has come\na long way since its early days of post-independence era. India today is one of\nthe largest producers and consumers of fertilizers in the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Fertilizer\nsubsidy was 80,000crore in 2018-19, an increase of 14 per cent over 2009-10.\nLarge part of this went to production and consumption of urea that was not\nneeded at all.<\/li><li>Nutrient\nBased Subsidy or NBS was introduced in 2010 with objective to promote balanced\nuse of fertilizers and to limit fertilizer subsidy of the government. <\/li><li>Idea\nwas to fix subsidy as per nutrients in the fertilizer and leave the\ndetermination of price to suppliers. <\/li><li>Presently\nUrea is not covered under the scheme due to political compulsions. Consequently\nsubsidized price of Urea remained stagnant even when real costs of production\nhave risen significantly.<\/li><li>On\nthe other hand Potassium and Phosphorous are covered under the scheme and a\nfixed subsidy as per content of nutrients is given to suppliers and they change\nMaximum Retail Price as per market signals<\/li><li>As\na result, actual use of NPK is in ratio of around 8:3:1 while recommended use\nis 4:2:1. This additional use of urea doesn\u2019t give any additional benefit to\nthe farmer. Instead this can degrade soil and harm crop. <\/li><li>Apart from Urea, farmer is not even getting\nbenefit due from NBS in case of subsidized potassium and phosphorus. Subsidy is\nprovided to manufacturers, who in turn are responsible to pass this subsidy to\nfarmers in form of reduced retail prices. <\/li><li>Rather, manufacturers have increased their prices\nforming a cartel and have usurped subsidy meant for farmers. Another issue of fertilizer subsidy is that most of this is\nconsumed by rich farmers of Punjab, Haryana and North West Uttar Pradesh. <\/li><li>Uptake of fertilizers depends a lot on sufficient supply of\nwater to the crop. As about 60% of total cultivated area of India is rain fed,\nsubsidy is cornered overwhelmingly by well irrigated states. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Significance\nof Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Increasing\ncost of seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides led to increased cost of farming.\nMajority of the farmers are indebted. To reduce debt and increasing the income\nof farmers ZBNF will be viable option<\/li><li>Chemical\nfarming needs all inputs like high yielding variety seeds and fertilizers and\npesticides along with assured irrigation. But in ZBNF no need of package method\nand it can be sustained from local inputs like cow dung and other farm wastage<\/li><li>Due\nto increased chemical intensive farming most of the soils in India are degraded\nand ground water was polluted. By practicing ZBNF soil will replenish with\nneeded nutrients and fertility along zero contamination of ground water.<\/li><li>For\nchemical intensive farming government every year raises the agriculture\nsubsidy. In 2019-20 budget proposes almost 80,000crore for fertilizer subsidy.\nBy promoting ZBNF in the long run the burden on exchequer will be reduced.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Issues\nwith ZBNF:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>ZBNF is an untested procedure and various claims that are\nbeing made with regards to it have to be verified and checked if this technique\nis to be applied on a wider scale, and before its introduction.<\/li><li>ZBNF would not be workable across all soil conditions and the\nyields are much lower when compared to modern scientific agriculture. Recently\nin Karnataka and Maharashtra the yield per acre was less than normal\nagricultural practices.<\/li><li>ZBNF is not really zero input; it connotes that no input\nneeds to be purchased from the market, assuming that the farmer has at least a\ncow, a&nbsp;<em>desi<\/em>&nbsp;one at that, and plenty of water.<\/li><li>Experts and farmers opine that&nbsp;even if ZBNF is adopted\nat a national scale,&nbsp;the challenges that are associated with modern\nagricultural farming like knowledge gap, availability of native seed banks,\ncold chain facilities, price support, and marketing issues would&nbsp;remain&nbsp;unresolved.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Way Forward: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Fertilizer\nsubsidies were considered particularly important in inducing farmers to adopt\nhigh yielding varieties, which often depended heavily on fertilizers, and they\nhave been successful in this regard. <\/li><li>Therefore,\nwith increase in fertilizer use over time, the subsidy has also increased. In\nIndia, fertilizer subsidies increased rapidly during the post-reforms period\nand peaked in the second-half of 2000s.<\/li><li>On\nthe issues of whether fertilizer subsidy is distributed equitably across crops,\nstates, and farm classes, most of&nbsp;\nfindings indicate that fertilizer subsidy is concentrated in a few\nstates, namely, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and\nPunjab. <\/li><li>The fertilizer subsidy, which is budgeted at Rs 80,000crore\nfor 2019-20, be given directly to farmers on a per hectare basis and allow them\nto decide whether they want to do ZBNF or chemical-fertilizer based farming. <\/li><li>The fertilizer prices will then be market determined,\nensuring their efficient usage, stopping their diversion to non-agri-uses as\nwell as to neighboring countries. It will be a win-win situation from several\nperspectives.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/columns\/fertiliser-subsidy-indian-farmers-narendra-modi-govt-5998093\/\">https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/opinion\/columns\/fertiliser-subsidy-indian-farmers-narendra-modi-govt-5998093\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context: significance of Zero Budget Natural Farming and direct cash transfer of subsidies in India. Governments in both developed and developing countries intervene in agriculture with a view to achieving a wide range of economic and social objectives. The reasons for government intervention are diverse and varied. Some of the most cited reasons for intervention&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-from-plate-to-plough-the-right-to-choose-16th-september-2019\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">7 PM |From plate to plough: the right to choose | 16th September, 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-52218","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":1704764258},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52218","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=52218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52218\/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=52218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}