Suggest some innovative practices for the Indian farmers to combat globalization.
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In the years since independence, India has made immense progress towards achieving food security. Its population has tripled, but food-grain production has more than quadrupled; there has thus been a substantial increase in available food-grain per capita.
But more can be done. Crop yields in India are still just 30% to 60% of the best sustainable crop yields achievable in the farms of developed and other developing countries. And poor infrastructure and unorganized retail means India has one of the world’s highest levels of post-harvest food loss.
Clearly, it is time for change. We not only need to respond to long-standing issues and challenges, but we must also face newer realities. The natural resources on which agriculture is based – land and water, above all – are being degraded and there is growing competition for their use. Climate change is already exacerbating this situation, making agriculture more risky, and it will have an even greater impact in the future.
But the public-private partnership model could be just the game-changer India’s agricultural sector needs. By drawing on the collective power of all agricultural stakeholders, PPPs can transform the sector at multiple levels. With the government providing and co-financing the back-end of the value chain, and the private sector and farmer contributions doing the rest, the agricultural sector could remain a primary engine of rural growth and poverty reduction in India.
Here are three ways PPPs could do that:
1. Investing in smarter value chains
PPPs could help spur the development of the food processing industry, one of the newest sectors in Indian agriculture. The food processing industry must do more than just increase the shelf life of food, preserve food nutrients and provide fortified products. Instead, supported by government and private investments, it should also look at providing farm extension services, enhance price realization, cut out intermediaries and improve the supply chain through forward and backward linkages.
An important role of the government, besides funding, will be to create an enabling environment for private investment. This needs to be done through tax rationalizations, duty exemptions, increases in public spending, priority sector lending and FDI. It is steps such as these that will boost private sector investment in supply chain infrastructure and services, leading to a reduction in waste and more added value.
2. Improving access to credit, technology and markets
PPPs could help bring cutting-edge technologies and approaches to India’s agricultural sector. IT and biotech stand to transform agriculture, raising its production levels and outputs. We need PPPs focused on getting farmers access to vital information, methodologies and the latest technology to help them in areas such as crop rotation, weather patterns, fertilizer use and going organic – all at the click of a button or a simple SMS on their mobile phones.
Biotechnology, meanwhile, can equip growers with techniques for developing high-yield crops, managing pests, better utilizing waste water and focusing on nutrition. The remarkable breakthroughs made in the cereal production industry show how much of an impact biotechnology can make. PPPs can help replicate this success in crucial areas such as oil seeds and pulses, which are highly import-intensive.
In the same way, PPP projects, when targeted at helping farmers connect with their marketplaces and financial institutions for micro-funding, can usher in massive alterations in the rural economy.
3. Building farmer resilience to environmental shocks
India’s farmers are constantly threatened by adverse weather and environmental conditions that spell disaster for their produce. Extreme situations such as flooding and droughts constantly plague India’s farming community. PPPs that protect the agricultural sector against the vagaries of nature can be life savers. In fact, in a country where farmer suicides are common, such interventions can actually save lives. PPPs that help the agricultural sector deal with weather shocks, and allow farmers to minimize risk through insurance, can be a crucial helping hand.
While PPPs in the agri space are not commonplace, they need to be. The Maharashtra government has already made a start with its Maharashtra Public-Private Partnership for Integrated Agriculture Development (PPPIAD) project. Under the aegis of this initiative, Maharashtra is developing integrated value chains for selected crops through PPPs and co-investment.
Part of the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture, the project aims to develop integrated value chains. What began with 11 projects in 2012-13 now encompasses 33 value chain programmes, with more than 60 participating companies. The project focuses on 15 key crops and has already reached almost half a million farmers, with a target of 5 million by 2020.
Answer:
India is considered as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Agriculture is the mother of any economy, whether it is rich or poor. Much of its influence is on the other sectors of economy - industry and service. India is the second largest in farm output. Hence, India’s economic security continues to be predicated upon the agriculture sector, and the situation is not likely to change in the near future. Even today, the share of agriculture in employment is about 49% of the population, as against around 75% at the time of independence. In the same period, the contribution of agriculture and allied sector to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has fallen from 61% to 17% in 2015-16. Around 51% of India’s geographical area is already under cultivation as compared to 11% of the world average. China with lesser cultivable land produces double the food grains, i.e. 607 million tons in 2015 -16 as compared with India’s 252 million tons in 2015-16. The present cropping intensity of 136% has registered an increase of only 25% since independence. Further, rain fed dry lands constitute 65% of the total net sown area. There is also an unprecedented degradation of land (107 million ha) and groundwater resource, and also fall in the rate of growth of total factor productivity. This deceleration needs to be arrested and agricultural productivity has to be doubled to meet growing demands of the population by 2050. Natural resource base of agriculture, which provides for sustainable production, is shrinking and degrading, and is adversely affecting production capacity of the ecosystem. However, demand for agriculture is rising rapidly with increase in population and per capita income and growing demand from industry sector. There is, thus, an urgent need to identify severity of problem confronting agriculture sector to restore its vitality and put it back on higher growth trajectory. The problems, however, are surmountable, particularly when new tools of science and technology have started offering tremendous opportunities for application in agriculture. However, the country recorded impressive achievements in agriculture during three decades since the onset of green revolution in late sixties. This enabled the country to overcome widespread hunger and starvation; achieve self-sufficiency in food; reduce poverty and bring economic transformation in millions of rural families. The situation, however, started turning adverse for the sector around mid-nineties, with slowdown in growth rate of output, which then resulted in stagnation or even decline in farmers’ income leading to agrarian distress, which is spreading and turning more and more serious. This Paper attempts to focus attention on Issues, Challenges and Government policies of Indian Agriculture in the context of Globalization.
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