Problem Faced By Farmers In India 

What are the various issues faced by Indian farmers?

1. Fragmented and small land holdings– Indian landholdings are so small that makes little marketable surplus. This makes them to go for subsistence agriculture and also difficult for mechanisation. Also due to more number of family members after independence, land was divided into smaller pieces leading to fragmentation. Cultivation on such a small area is not economically feasible. Such small farmers have become vulnerable. In some cases, the farmers are not the owners of the land, which makes profitable cultivation impossible because significant portion of the earnings go towards the payment of lease for the land owner.

1. Unaffordable good quality Seeds– Seed is a critical and basic input for attaining higher crop yields and sustained growth in agricultural production. Distribution of assured quality seed is as critical as the production of such seeds. Unfortunately, good quality seeds are out of reach of the majority of farmers, especially small and marginal farmers mainly because of exorbitant prices of better seeds.

1. Low average yield– Indian soils have been used for growing crops over thousands of years without caring much for replenishing. This has led to depletion and exhaustion of soils resulting in their low productivity. The average yields of almost all the crops are among lowest in the world. This is a serious problem which can be solved by using more manures and fertilisers.

1. 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.

1. Lack of mechanisation– In spite of the large scale mechanisation 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. This lead to lesser productivity.

Some Measures to improver condition of farmers in India

1. Processing industries and cold storage facility– Today 90% farmers want processing unit and cold storage facility in the villages, especially for vegetables and fruits. So that farmers will get proper marketing & rates. This will reduce middlemen exploitation. Government should incentivise industry to open food processing units and cold storage facility near villages.
2. Irrigation facilities– Small land farmers are unable to arrange irrigation systems. They need proper irrigation. So government should have to take initiative for providing irrigation to the small land owners.
3. Education to farmers– Many farmers are not aware about crop rotation. Though education in urban areas has improved a lot , the government has ignored the same in rural areas in general & in agriculture sector. So Government agencies should start efficient mechanism in this regard.
4. Need for better water management– Currently available irrigation facility do not cover the entire cultivable land. In most cases, it is not the lack of water but lack of proper water management that causes water shortage. Improved modern methods of rain water harvesting should be developed. Surplus water from perennial rivers can be diverted to the needy areas. Connecting the rivers throughout the country will solve this problem. Construction of national waterways will improve the irrigation facility, which in turn can save the farmers, if the monsoon would fail.
5. Developing alternate source of income for farmers :- The Government should take up the responsibility for providing training to the farmers to acquire new skills to reduce the dependence on agriculture. New areas like horticulture, aquaculture, fishery should also be promoted.

1. Sustainable farming methods– Organic farming is the way out for sustainable farming. Organic certification process should be more faster. Precision farming helps to get out of drought adversities by targeted input delivery. It requires minimum input and also reduces cost of production. Already Micro-irrigations are helping rained farmers in drought conditions. These methods should be promoted.

1. Women support– Women farmers don’t enjoy entitlement to their land. GoI is in process of digitisation of land records. In that process women farmers of that family can also be done to get their Rights. Further smart farm tools and machineries must be gender neutral in its accessibility.
2. Climate Resilience farming (CRF)– It depends mostly on technological tools like smart weather forecast using Big data analytics. Plant biotechnology by developing short duration varieties, submerged crop varieties for coastal regions, drought resistant varieties for arid areas can further promote CRF.

Poor storage

For one, India just doesn’t have enough cold storages. There are some 7,000 of them, mostly stocking potatoes in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Resultantly, fruits and vegetables perish very quickly. Unless India hoards food effectively, a bumper crop can easily spell doom for farmers.

Secondly, there’s not enough processing of food happening to ensure that crops don’t perish or go waste. Take onions, again. One way to dampen volatility in onion prices is to dehydrate the bulb and make these processed onions more widely available. Currently, less than 5% of India’s fruit and vegetables is processed.
Thirdly, farmers in India plant for new harvest looking back at crop prices in the previous year. If the crop prices were healthy, they sow more of the same, hoping for still better prices. If the rains are good, a crop glut can happen easily, and lead to extraordinary fall in prices. Farmers hold on to the crops for a while, and then begin distress sales.

Radical measures

Clearly, farming policies in India need a radical overhaul. Punjab, India’s “granary”, is a perfect example. At a time when India does not suffer food shortages, water-guzzling wheat and rice comprise 80% of its cropped area and deplete groundwater. Rising production of cereals has meant that government has been giving paltry rises to the farmers while buying paddy and wheat, eroding their profitability.

“They [the policies] are distorting the choices that farmers make – those who should be finding ways to grow vegetables, which grow more expensive every year, are instead growing wheat we no longer need,” says Mihir Sharma, author of Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy.

But the best that the governments here do is to quickly raise crop buying prices and alleviate the farmers’ suffering. Faced with a crop glut at home, the newly appointed BJP government in Uttar Pradesh was smart enough to promptly raise the procurement price of potatoes – and announce a controversial farm loan waiver – and quell a simmering farmers’ revolt. The government in Madhya Pradesh, ruled by the same party, failed to act in time. Now it says it will pay more to buy off the surplus onions. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Why farmers kill themselves

More than 28 farmers and farm labourers die by suicide in India every day, according to the 2021 State of India’s Environment (SoE) report — an annual brought out by Down To Earth in association with Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

The SoE report highlighted the suicide numbers in recent years: 

• 5,957 farmers in 17 states (and Union territories) and 4,324 farm labourers in 24 states in 2019

• 5,763 farmers in 20 states and 4,586 agricultural workers in 21 states in 2018

The toll in increased between the two years in:

1. Andhra Pradesh

1. Assam

1. Chhattisgarh

1. Himachal Pradesh

1. Maharashtra

1. Mizoram

1. Punjab

1. Uttar Pradesh

1. Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

he National Crime Records Bureau is silent on what leads to farmer suicides, pointed out DTE Managing Editor Richard Mahapatra. A 2016-17 government report had listed three probable causes: Frequent crop failures due to vagaries of monsoons, lack of assured water, and pest attacks and diseases. “The true reason behind these deaths is that agriculture has become a severely loss-making profession and calling. The market does not the pay our farmers their due price,” Mahapatra said. 

(They) do not get the financial support needed to make farming lucrative. At the same time, the cost of inputs — from seeds to water and labour — is increasing; risks are going up as well because of climate change-triggered extreme weather. When their crops become costly, the government steps in to import cheaper food. Our farmers, thus, suffer at both ends. It is for this reason that they are demanding a minimum support price (MSP) as an insurance against price volatility.

The existing MSP system is faulty: While MSP is fixed for 22 crops, in reality it is used only for a few (wheat, paddy, etc) for which the government has a procurement system, Narain pointed otu. The government’s own data reveals that almost 70 per cent market transactions for 10 select crops in 600 wholesale markets were at below MSP. 

“India has been reeling from a severe agrarian distress for some years now; suicides by farmers and farm labourers are a tragic and painful manifestation of this distress. It is time we talked about the real cost of the food we eat, and about how to benefit the farmers who grow our food,”