employment shift has been taking place from the agriculture and the remaining sectors what are the effects of the shift and suggest measures to make agriculture as a profitable occupation
Answers
Answer:
agriculture agro vitt application
Explanation:
India has enough food; does it have too many people working in agriculture? The pressure on land is an outcome of policy, which condemns most people to marginal farming. India needs a different set of solutions for agriculture and for those working the land.
India is an agricultural country. Agriculture is “only” ~16 % of GDP but the largest sector for employment. Officially farmers are only a few hundred million, but adding family members who help or occasionally farm, as also wage labourers, the number of farm workers is likely to be closer to half a billion people. But how many people would India need farming if it were as labour efficient as the US for growing crops? I am not suggesting it is possible, or even desirable (large, mechanised farms with massive chemical and water inputs) but as a thought exercise? Just four million people.
The US is extreme; with less than 2% of its population growing food sufficient for almost 2 billion people, but much of it is fed to animals. The US also focuses on many crops suitable for mechanisation, but even using metrics from many East Asian countries, with about 10% of the population in agriculture - as opposed to half the workforce for India - that is hundreds of millions of people who could shift to alternative options.
[T]oday’s agriculture policies fail to recognise how crop choices, input costs, and the supply chain are intertwined, perpetuating marginal farming.
Jobs aside, India needs to shift from basic farming to more efficient, sustainable, and productive farming. Unfortunately, today’s agriculture policies fail to recognise how crop choices, input costs, and the supply chain are intertwined, perpetuating marginal farming. Moreover, growing more food isn’t the solution to providing employment. There is enough food, especially considering calories as opposed to micronutrients. Exports are possible but require extensive value add, and it is not clear how much of this would benefit the farmer as opposed to the processor or trader. Fundamentally, India must figure out a way to provide meaningful employment to hundreds of millions of people outside agriculture. Failing to do so means not just a failure of human development, it represents a political if not social powder keg – underemployed and disaffected youth are a national security threat, becoming fodder for radicalisation, a life of crime, or worse.
Farming as a Viable Livelihood?
Agriculture is dying, OK, not as in the production of food but as a desirable profession. For all the bucolic if not romanticised portrayals of farming and a rural lifestyle, it is really a thankless, risky, and even back-breaking job, especially as undertaken by the masses, which is subsistence agriculture. One bad yield, whether due to errant rains, pests, etc., and most farmers have no buffer available. This also makes farmers risk averse, with an implicit cost of capital some 50-100% (!), which is essentially one season or one year of horizon. Most are not able to undertake long term investments, innovation, or major change.
The clearest indicator of the problems of agriculture as a profession is how there are actually shortfalls of labour in some areas, with larger farms relying on imported farm labourers, drawn not just from the neighbouring states but from the far ends of the country (especially the north-east) and even Nepal. Younger generations do not want to follow their parents’ footsteps, which pushes urbanisation. Unfortunately, urban areas, while offering more opportunities, also relegate many to low-end jobs.
Farmers tell me the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA or MGNREGA, formerly NREGA) has heightened the problem. In fact, Schedule I Clause 12 of NREGA (2005) states, “As far as practicable, a task funded under the Scheme shall be performed by using manual labour and not machines.” This highlights how MNREGA has really been about jobs, instead of output or productivity. But instead of slicing the pie, agriculture needs to focus on growing the pie. Adding employment into farms is unlikely to change yields much, and certainly will not increase revenues sufficiently to compensate for increased labour costs. One possibility is for MNREGA to coordinate with cropping cycles, to enable a more steady balance of opportunities (and labour supply). Not only are farm sizes in India very small, they are declining due to population growth and competition for land. Per National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) estimates the average size is some 1.2 hectares only, and the median is lower. Other estimates places indicate 70% of farmers operating below one hectare in size. In farming, size matters. On average, smaller holdings lose money, i.e., their household costs are higher than revenues, a chunk of which come from non-farming activities. The trend is