From subsistence to commercial farming

      In our country, farming is generally done for subsistence purpose not for commercial purpose. Most of our farmers are small and marginal even landless labourers and share croppers. The average land area of a farmer in our country is 1.5 ha whereas it is 250 ha in other developed countries like USA. With the increasing population, average farm size is declining, which is the major hinderance for the development in agriculture sector because it is difficult for a resource poor marginal farmer to adopt new technology, farm machinery and power, irrigation or any other innovative farm practices. They can not take measures to increase the productivity and it is difficult for them to protect the crop from disease, pest or environmental hazards. In this context, direct benefit transfer schemes like KALIA and PM-KISAN could be effective in strengthening farmers’ socioeconomic status, if implemented properly.
                    It is important to state here that only 3.40% of the total population in Japan, 2.60% in France, 1.40% in USA, 1.10% in UK are employed in agriculture whereas nearly half of our people are involved in agriculture. In spite of very less no people involved in farm sector in these countries they are self-sufficient in food production and are developed. It is never observed that any farmer of the above said countries committed suicide but suicide by farmers is much frequent in our country because the farmers of those developed countries do it for commercial purpose with proper plan & programme, sufficient initial investment, improved technology and adequate protection measures for probable losses. So, it is the time to change our mindset from traditional rice cultivation to commercial agriculture.
                     In the developed countries agriculture is often referred as agri-business. Because they focus not only the productivity but also the storage, processing and marketability of the agricultural products. So, it is not enough for us to emphasis only on boosting productivity. We have to be much concern and serious about the storage, marketability and proper use of agricultural produces. It is estimated that there should be one cold storage in each block in our state. According to this estimation there should be 314 cold storages in our state but which is only 45, out of them only 5 is govt owned. This badly affects the storage and marketing of the farm products. For example, the price of onion per kg ranges between RS 15 to 50 in different period of the year due to this. This not only affects the farmers income but also badly affects the consumer’s budget. The gap obserbed between supply and demand of the products affect the market condition.

                In our society no educated or rich people choose farming. The poor people of rural areas those who have no other option of employment choose farming as a profession. In the developed countries, the well- established people choose farming. Because they consider agriculture as an industry. Many of you won’t believe that some farmers [may be called as businessman or industrialist] of USA use helicopters in agricultural practices ! So, it’s time for the educated people to choose agriculture as profession. The govt should promote entrepreneurship and skill development in agriculture like other sectors. Start up in Agri-tech sector is needed. The skilled man power i.e. the technical graduates in agriculture and allied sector could be used efficiently in this regard. Govt should motivate them to start their own farm business by providing them proper guidance and incentive. Most importantly enough emphasis should be given to innovation, research and education in agriculture for the better and greater interest of the country.

[ The datas given here are obtained from various newspaper article and text books. So, they may slightly mismatch with the datas from other sources ]

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