Me and my food producer:
“If you ate today, thank a farmer”, – this quote is often seen in Face book these days. I feel good reading this, because it reflects the gratitude towards the food producer. In reality, we may have to thank more than one farmer as the various kinds of ingredients in our food come from various farms spread across regions and states. We have seen a steady growth in our country’s food grain production from 51 Million Metric Tons in 1950-51 to about 257 Million Metric Tons in 2011-12. From past one decade, we could reach self sufficiency of food production and could meet the objective of feeding the nation, which has been the priority. The sectorial performance of agriculture has not disappointed if the referral time frame is 3 years blocks and it has delivered the value even in the unfavourable seasons and years because of drought, flood, and other climatic extremities etc. But the other important objective of making Indian Agriculture profitable for the producer still remains incomplete and can be treated as only a partial achievement. On the other hand, if we want to understand how the profitability has gone up or down in the past decade, either to the farmers or as a sector in total, we may face the issue of non-availability of records on cost of cultivation and net returns to individual growers.
The world has about 1.4 billion people who are working in agricultural sector. Indian agri- sector, with its combination of inefficiencies and efficiencies is effectively feeding 17.5% of the world’s population from only 11 % of the world’s arable land and 4 % of its water resources. While this may appeal as good sectorial performance, the concern is that about 50% of the population is contributing to only around 14% of GDP approximately. The contribution to GDP from Agriculture has come down from about 30% in 1990-91 to about 14% in 2012-13. In a way, these figures reflect the underperformance keeping the number of people participating in agriculture. As the population is increasing, the proportion of people working in agriculture is coming down at a slow pace which may not affect the sector significantly. Even when technology can enhance the value generation per hectare, the increased dependency on limited land size coupled with increase in input costs is making agriculture less remunerative in relative terms. The phenomenon of fragmentation of agricultural lands also corroborates the logic behind dwindling farm profitability and attractiveness towards farming. As NSSO survey indicates that about 40% of the farmers want to opt out from agriculture, when actually agri-sector is accommodating the jobless category year after year. We can understand that, the primary sector is having significant number of ‘reluctant farmers ‘who may not have the necessary skills to take up profitable agriculture.
As the profession of agriculture is one of the riskiest professions, which has to deal with climate and market related risks, lack of skills or inadequate skill levels are pushing farmers into even higher risk levels. When 50% of the people from world’s 2nd largest populous country are in highly risky profession of farming, we can imagine the overall national performance of agrarian sector.
The ‘heterogeneity’ factor:
In our country, the major 15 Agro climatic zones with variations in rainfall, temperature, soil types and water resources are covering the cultivation of several crop types which include cereals, pulses, fruits and vegetables, spices, oil seeds, plantation crops, fibre crops drugs and narcotics related crops. Approximately 6 lakh villages in India are involved in agricultural production covering about 138 million land holdings. The major crop seasons are early kharif, late kharif, rabi and summer. Even when more than 50% of the cultivated land available for all crops depends on rainfall, still 50% of the workforce is engaged in agriculture. As the risk levels of individual farmers is increasing in agriculture, the participation of more number of people in agriculture, the broad level aggregate risk is affecting the overall performance of the primary sector.
If we see the functional and operational dynamics of Indian farming, the twin factors of diversity & heterogeneity reflect strongly. If we want to understand farms, they are small, midsized or big in terms of size, irrigated land or dry land with reference to availability of irrigation, fertile, moderately fertile non-fertile in the aspects of soil fertility condition, farms that grow food grains, vegetables, fruits, spices, oil seeds, fibre crops etc going by the crop taken up. All these aspects of farming should be classified and segregated clearly in order to understand the status of Indian farms. But the practical difficulty is enormous to develop a managerial approach to bring various classifications and careful consideration of about 138 million Indian agricultural land holdings under an integrated framework. The crops, crop cycles, markets, pricing patterns, crop dynamics, social conditions of the farmers, enablers and risks associated with farming vary in high degree from place to place.
A fresh approach to farm management is critical to increase the farm profitability. As the heterogeneity creeps into farm management aspects at macro level, a careful factor based approach can be adopted to draw strategies for good crop production in future. Even farming activity in various agro-climatic zones is not really comparable. When some set of crops in a particular agro-climatic zone can be cultivated with relative ease, cultivation of some other set of crops in a different agro-climatic zone should be done with great skill and care. As we infer from the text books of’ Farm Management’ managing agricultural farms is a science as well as an art. Let us remember, the farmers of India are the people who have been managing the farms from past so many decades and centuries with their own assimilation levels of science and art. No mechanism has tested the farmers’ skill levels or knowledge in their occupation in a formal way as the occupation of agriculture still remains in freelance space and in the unorganized sector. In such context, the skill transfer to next generation generally happen through hereditary channel. But in the current scenario, where farmers want to abandon agriculture and agriculture being taken care majorly by older generation, serious concerns arise regarding the skill and knowledge levels of young farmers in their profession. When Scientists, Researchers and business organizations provide agricultural inputs, technologies and equipment, at the grassroots level, farmer is still the manager of farm enterprise. The application of technology and gainful use of resources and efficiency in operations, farm management level financial management are taken up only by the practicing farmers. In Indian condition, 84.5% such farmers belong to small and marginal category. If we imagine what is the kind of small enterprise farming is , with its inherent risks and skill requirement we may appreciate the immediate need of up gradation of manpower competencies in farm sector, to make farming a sustainable commercial enterprise.
Who is a farmer and who is not?
I also feel that the word farmer is very broad in meaning and function. When we use ’farmer” in any business context, the profession should be defined with utmost clarity. As we observe from the perspective of heterogeneity in understanding the various kinds of farmers , farmers can be agriculturist, horticulturist, poultry farmer, dairy farmer, piggery farmer owing to kind of activity, owner and tenant with reference to ownership, small, marginal, medium , big in relation to size of farm or enterprise, literate, semiliterate, educated and highly educated in the aspect of formal education, a informally trained, informally not trained, partially trained through formal channels and untrained in terms of skill related training in farming. Farmers may take up low value cereal crops or high value commercial crops. For example, the case of a small farmer in dry land of semi arid area drastically differs from medium level farmer in irrigated land in the same semi-arid zone. The kinds of permutations and combinations in the aspects of agricultural production system are very high in number. Hence, in essence, the farmers or the farms should not be brought to the broad single category or even as broad sets of limited groups for any scientific, managerial or policy level references or interventions. While the climate and natural resources are not under the control of humans, learning the appropriate farming related skills, understanding and practicing scientific methods of farming and working with positive attitude is possible in the capacity of human beings. I personally feel that the competency aspects and interest levels of Indian farmers regarding farming require a serious review as significant number of farmers is interested in leaving their profession. The average age of Indian farmer is increasing in general, because of less participation from the younger generation. We can also interpret the situation like this – as the average age of India still remains in “young” slot, the average age of Indian farmer may be in “old” slot. It means that the older generation is still striving to feed the physically able and young population.
A couple of paradoxes:
As the skill transfer from older generation to younger generation of farmers is the need, the extent of transfer of skill can happen is difficult to quantify in the traditional, family oriented profession. As there are no formal full time farmer training courses for farmers in agri-allied sectors, the major channel of skill and knowledge transfer is the informal channel. Agriculture and allied activities are freelance professions and predominantly the owners as well as other participants in these professions are not trained unlike in organized service sector. The objective of sustained farm profitability can be achieved through providing technical, financial and market related training to practicing agri-professionals. Training and retaining the skilful farmers in farming is also very important as the powerful entry barrier of land ownership prevents the new comers to enter in farming in the prevailing situation. If somebody wants to buy land for agricultural purpose today, estimation or even imagining the break even period is a tough task considering the capital cost of purchasing the land.
The farmers in general feel that the profession of agriculture is not as remunerative and risk free as the service sector. Hence, it can be inferred that the net income from agricultural operations is less compared to other sectors. At the same time the real estate prices of the agricultural lands are going up in various parts of India. In this condition, even though the agricultural land owners are getting richer by possession of physical immovable asset of land, their inability to convert the highly valuable factor of production into operational profit is limited. The current condition calls for the integrated analytics based approach to address the multiple issues in farming at macro level.
Can we solve the farming issues?
Whenever we compare the productivity levels of crop varieties i.e. India vs. abroad productivity levels of crops are lower in India in many crops. If we analyze the reasons behind the low productivity levels the limitations because of climate and natural resources, limitation of genetic potential of varieties, limitations in skill and knowledge of farmers are the major reasons. If we cannot change the external factors, at least the skill and competency levels of farmers can be changed. About 45% of the cultivated land area in India is operated by small and marginal farmers who are 85% in population of farmers. Even though, some references claim that small farms are contributing to decrease in farm production or productivity, we can observe several small farms that are commercially successful and also some big farms which are not efficient on the other side. If what we have are small farms and small farmers in plenty, we should improve the skills of small farmers to increase the farm viability.
(The author is the Director of Ingrain Technologies, agri-sector specific consulting organization. The ideas are personal and the data is obtained from DAC and other sources)