Thinking Beyond Farm Sops

Economic Affairs Agricultural Finance

2019 - an agricultural year marred by a series of interventions and disruptions.

The first half of the year saw the launch of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) with a record allocation of ?75,000 crore.

The second half - a disaster for the sector as many parts of the country witnessed drought and floods.

The economic slowdown and the spiraling onion and vegetable prices - a burdened consumers (including farmers) - a short respite only to a section of farmers.

populist measures have a low bearing on the economy. Despite several measures to reduce vulnerability of climate-induced disasters, the farm sector and farmers continue to suffer losses.

Expenditure and growth drivers, mainly the subsidiary sectors, must be addressed.

Despite higher growth in livestock and fisheries sector, only moderate to low expenditure was recorded.
Moreover, the expenditure on research and development in agriculture needs to be raised from nearly 0.40% of agriculture GDP to 1%.

Considering India's dependency on agriculture and recurring climate-induced disasters, it is imperative to expand the implementation of Climate Smart Villages of the ICAR-National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) across the nation.Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), which are currently facing operational and structural issues governed by different Acts and funded by various sources, may be strengthened by bringing them under one institution, preferably an FPO Development and Regulatory Authority - build a block-chain based e-market places connecting farmers, traders, agencies, institutions and exporters on a common platform to check price fluctuations and harness decentralisation.

Need to develop affordable technologies and be deployed in rural and remote areas where digital literacy of farmers has improved considerably.
Key farm institutions and organisations in the front line of farm service, dealing with perishables and low shelf life commodities, must digitalise so that they are efficiently managed.
Private sector involvement – large-scale investment in agriculture over several years have encouraged monoculture – a threat to the environment and soil health (mainly in green revolution areas).
Instead, a small-scale investment measures or an incentive-based system is essential to scale up sustainable practices such as agroforestry, climate-smart agriculture, ecosystem services, conservation agriculture and others. Increasing CSR will help to tap more private investments besides encouraging private players in potential areas where production sustainability is possible.
Govt must establish a farm data agency, which can consolidate, collate and maintain farm data available at various platforms. Ongoing efforts of digitization of land records must also include farmer-centric advisories.
From EoDB to EoF – to ascertain the progress made by national and State governments on the key indicators of farming.

The need of the hour – setting up two institutions: -

A national agricultural development council on the lines of the GST Council under the chairmanship of PM for effective coordination and convergence of States on key reforms and policies.
Farmers’ welfare commissions (both at the Centre and State level), as an independent institutional mechanism which will act as a neutral platform for assessing all agriculture-related issues and schemes.
Involvement of centrally-funded research organizations as knowledge partners.
It is pertinent to deliberate on an ‘Indian Agricultural Service’ on the lines of the Agricultural Research Service of the US Dept of Agriculture.
There is a need of well-tailored farm measures beyond short-run sops to balance the national requirement with the farmer’s aspirations.

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