Farmers’ distress needs urgent and innovative solutions

There is a consensus in the country that farmers’ incomes instead of increasing have either declined or have remained stagnant. 

Even the union agriculture minister acknowledged that minimum support prices are not being received by the farmers in many crops.

Some analysts have suggested that instead of the central government meeting 60 per cent of procurement, it should meet 90 per cent of the cost because of a budget squeeze in most of the states. Many farmer associations have also endorsed the recommendation of Swaminathan commission of a 50 per cent margin on the cost of production.

There is an obvious paradox that the government has to deal with and that is balancing inflationary pressures due to higher prices and containing farmer’s distress and improving their income. Paradoxically enough, there is hardly any discussion on reducing the cost of cultivation or production of agriculture or livestock-based enterprises.

I suggest that the next budget at the state and central level should focus on improving incomes by reducing cost, adding value to produce at the farm level, including packaging, and improving wages of women and men workers. Elimination of child labour from the farming sector can be achieved by increasing productivity because our studies have shown that if productivity is low, then local incentives for engaging children are highest.

There is no obligation yet on the part of Krishi Vigyan Kendra in every district to allocate at least one third space and resources for trial and demonstration of low cost sustainable innovations developed by farmers. A significant budget needs to be allocated for immediate on-farm trials of thousands of farmer innovations documented by NIF in all the agro-climatic zone and subzone of the country. There should be a strong censure of populist measures of making water and power free. When there is no incentive to use water efficiently, farmers will tend to flood irrigate their field. It will lead to high leaching of nutrients and increased succulence of the plant. The result is higher pest attack.

The water table has been going down and with free power, it will go down further. The next budget should include the following provisions:

a) Rs 5 crore per district for rural innovations and start-ups aimed at improving farmers’, workers’ and women’s income requiring no further approval from state or central level.

b) Awards for farmers, workers and women groups which are able to reduce the cost of cultivation per unit of production and or increased productivity in every block of the country (Rs 50 lakh per block).

c) A special mission for providing agrometeorological information to every Gramsabha to plan flexible farm operations to mitigate adverse effects of climatic fluctuations.

d) Block level women’s knowledge, innovation, and incubation fund is needed to improve their traditional skills, help them leverage their food processing knowledge and skills to meet emerging demand for niche products. 

e) The platforms to bring consumers and producers together, such as the SATTVIK traditional food festival organised by SRISTI, must be expanded and deregulated to improve the income of farmers in a time-bound manner.

f) Community-level, small farm, machinery/devices banks must be created to reduce drudgery and improve the productivity of farm workers.

g) In-situ value education should be the mantra of development in the next budget. Small, multi-purpose food processing machinery supported by the NIF can be replicated urgently to prevent farm distress due to the price crash. 

h) While there has been a thrust for start-up movement in urban areas, India’s first grassroots incubator set up in collaboration with Gujarat Government in 1997 known as GIAN.org is languishing for support. We need to expand GIAN’S capacity to build upon the knowledge and ideas of women and other workers, ITI & Polytechnic students to meet the unmet social needs.

The author is founder of Honey Bee Network & visiting faculty at IIM-A