explain three problem faced by indian agricutlure
Answers
Indian Agriculture has very different challenges compared to other parts of the world. India has great tropical climate in most parts of the country but resource-wise we lack quite a few things such as:
Agricultural Marketing: Farmers suffer big time from lack of marketing skills and facilities. Brokers or middle men still rule the procurement domain. Farmers have very less knowledge of which crop is in demand and how much to sell it for. In fact, these middle men book crops even before harvest. Small and marginal farmers, due to lack of information and capital, trust these brokers and sell their crop at a throw-away price. Farmers are also burdened with loans, drought, mismanagement, family feuds for property ownership, and hence don't bother to dedicate time and effort into marketing.
Land Holdings: Small and fragmented land-holdings, net sown land is huge- 141.2 million hectares and total cropped area is 189.7 million hectares. But unfortunately, due to very small and scattered holdings India as an Agriculture country suffers.
Labor: A lot of migration from villages to towns has happened in the recent decade and it is very difficult to get labor while sowing and harvesting even for small land holdings. For bigger land lords it is mechanization which they are slowly getting used to.
Seeds: Quality seeds is a far cry for majority of the farmers. They are so expensive that farmers almost give up on farming.
Manures, Fertilizers and Herbicides: The country has a potential of 650 million tonnes of rural and 160 lakh tonnes of urban compost which is not fully utilized at present. The utilization of this potential will solve the twin problem of disposal of waste and providing manure to the soil. Cow dung provides the best manure to the soils. But its use as such is limited because much of cow dung is used as kitchen fuel in the shape of dung cakes. Reduction in the supply of fire wood and increasing demand for fuel in the rural areas due to increase in population has further complicated the problem. Chemical fertilizers are costly and are often beyond the reach of the poor farmers. The fertilizer problem is, therefore, both acute and complex.
Irrigation: Although India is the second largest irrigated country of the world after China, only one-third of the cropped area is under irrigation. Irrigation is the most important agricultural input in a tropical monsoon country like India where rainfall is uncertain, unreliable and erratic India cannot achieve sustained progress in agriculture unless and until more than half of the cropped area is brought under assured irrigation.
Lack of mechanization: In spite of the large scale mechanization of agriculture in some parts of the country, most of the agricultural operations in larger parts are carried on by human hand using simple and conventional tools and implements like wooden plough, sickle, etc.
Soil erosion: Due to poor irrigation practices and wind there is quite some soil erosion which certainly needs attention.