What according to you, the government could do to improvise the conditions of farmers in India? Suggest few measures.
Answers
Answer:
1. There is a significant need for an appropriate irrigation system considering rising water scarcity and depleting groundwater resources. Less than 50% of agriculture in India is irrigated.
2. Small landholders lose out the most from this. It is not economically viable for most of them to transport their produce for centralised large-scale processing – and they lack local processing and preservation technologies. This results in a lot of wastage.
3. India must start using data to continuously improve the efficiency of its agricultural supply chains. New technologies such as sensors, GPS and satellite imaging can help collect meaningful data to make India’s agriculture system more resilient.
4. To compensate for the uncertainty caused by climate change, an effective crop insurance programme is required to protect farmers from bad yields. Many already pay into insurance programmes but they provide little protection. The system needs overhauling so that small farmers are protected by low premium and long-term insurance cover, instead of being designed, as it seems to be at the moment, purely for the profit of insurance companies.
5. Agricultural research will be vital in increasing yields but also in increasing resilience to all the problems that could come with climate change – including extreme heat and precipitation, pests and crop disease. The research will be especially important for crops such as pulses and soybean, which are crucial crops and highly vulnerable to weather and climate change.