The term land holding or ‘agricultural holding’ indicates average size of agricultural land held by the farmers in India. The number of small and marginal agricultural land holdings in the country (known as operational holdings) has registered a marginal increase in 2015-16 compared to 2010-11, according to the Tenth agricultural census. This means that there are more people who now own smaller parcels of agricultural land.

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Trends in land holding (Agricultural Census 2015-16):

• The percentage of land holders who are women has increased from 12.79% in 2010-11 to 13.87% in 2015-16, with a corresponding increase of 1.2 percentage points in the operated area.
• This shows that more and more females are participating in the management and operation of agricultural lands.
• Marginal, small and medium land holdings constitute the lion’s share of operated area – large land holdings account for only 9% of the total operational area.
• The average size of operational holdings is highest in Nagaland (5 hectares) and lowest in Kerala (0.18 hectares).
• The total number of land units used for agricultural production has shown a 5% increase in 2015-16 compared to 2010-11.
• The total number of operational holdings in the country has increased from 138 million in 2010-11 to 146 million in 2015-16.
• Uttar Pradesh is home to the largest number of land holders, constituting 16% of the total number.

Land fragmentation

• It refers to the breakdown of the landholdings to smaller, unviable tracts of lands due to inheritance laws.
• The land belonging to the father is equally distributed among his sons. This distribution of land does not entail a collection or consolidated one, but its nature is fragmented.
• Demographic pressure has pushed down the land: man ratio to less than 0.2 hectares of cultivable land per head of rural population.
• It has also progressively pushed down the size structure of landholdings.
• The problem of small and fragmented holdings is more serious in densely populated and intensively cultivated states like Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar and eastern part of Uttar Pradesh where the average size of land holdings is less than one hectare and in certain parts it is less than even 0.5 hectare.
• About 92% of holdings operated by SC groups comprised small and marginal holdings.

Challenges posed by Land fragmentation:

• Sub-division and fragmentation of the holdings is one of the main causes of our low agricultural productivity and backward state of our agriculture.
• A lot of time and labour is wasted in moving seeds, manure, implements and cattle from one piece of land to another.
• Irrigation becomes difficult on such small and fragmented fields.
• Further, a lot of fertile agricultural land is wasted in providing boundaries. Under such circumstances, the farmer cannot concentrate on improvement.
• The farm mechanization cannot be applied in small land holdings.
• Although legislation for consolidation of holdings has been enacted by almost all the states, it has been implemented only in Punjab, Haryana and in some parts of Uttar Pradesh.
• The shrinking of productive agricultural land and land base being utilized for non agricultural purposes also makes the crises of fragmented land holdings multi-dimensional.
• Research suggests that only 14% of marginal and 27% of small holdings were able to get credit from institutional sources whereas about 33% of medium and 29% of large farmers could avail institutional credit in India.
• Producers with small holdings also often face problems due to inefficiencies in transporting their produce leading to increased dependence on middlemen. Therefore, there is loss of income which becomes the middleman’s commission.

Measures needed:

• To ensure farmer-centric agricultural development, land consolidation efforts for good quality and efficient farming needs to be undertaken.
• Cooperative farming: Cooperative farming is a method wherein farmers pool their resources in certain areas of agricultural activity for mutual benefit.
• Contract Farming and Collaborative Farming initiatives: Though contract farming does not directly help in preventing fragmentation, the need of contractual requirements can be a tool for farmers to collaborate for joint cultivation.
• Corporate farming: Large corporate and MNCs that are into agricultural supply chain often try to integrate and consolidate their product supply chains to have better control on costs and ensure supply security.
• NGOs, farmer associations and the extension wing of the agricultural ministry at the grass root level should educate small and marginal farmers on the benefits of land consolidation which will reap benefits in scaling up of their operations and increasing profitability.
• India has a robust and effective Panchayati Raj system that is an institutional forum for undertaking developmental projects. Pilot studies of collective farming, structured and monitored by the Panchayats can be undertaken at various gram and zila parishad levels.

Conclusion:

While Indian agriculture has shown resilience to many shocks that penetrated into the world in the last decade, the farmers are successfully producing crops in spite of many hardships. However, all this will change in the coming decades as growing population, further fragmentation, land conversion will lead to lower productivity, shortage of labour and dwindling natural resources.

These may put us back in the grip of a perennial food crisis. There is, therefore, a great responsibility on the farming community and the government alike to realize this future shock and take proactive steps to avoid such crises. Consolidation is one such solution theme.