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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

A quiet green revolution -KP Prabhakaran Nair
-The Hindu Business Line
 

Small farmers in Jharkhand are growing more money and seeing better health, thanks to vegetables

Indian farmers have often been perceived as lacking in initiative, but the latest developments on the farm front belie that stereotype. Not only have they shown initiative, they have started a quiet revolution. The phenomenon can be summed up in one word: vegetables.

Small farmers, reeling from recurring droughts and declining productivity of staple crops such as rice and wheat, are turning enthusiastically to these short-duration crops, as the rising demand for vegetables has opened up a great opportunity.

India is now the second largest producer of vegetables in the world, after China. With vegetables driving agricultural growth, the new government can no longer afford to ignore the trend.

Take this example from Jharkhand. Ram Oraon, 60, blames his grandfather for his frail health and for having had to spend most of his life battling poverty. He saw two brothers die young. "

They always had poor health," says the marginal farmer from Malhan Bhuiyadih village near Ranchi. Over the years, Oraon realised the reason for his family's sufferings. His grandfather, like other farmers in the village, grew rice and potatoes, which is what they also ate. He never saw profit in vegetables nor was he aware of their health benefits.

About a decade ago, Ram Oraon switched to growing vegetables. Showing off a basketful of freshly harvested brinjals from his farm, Oraon says: "Now we are healthy and a bit wealthy."

 

Freshness basket
 
This holds true for many families in Oraon's village. Lured by the booming vegetable market, the farmers of Malhan Bhuiyadih and neighbouring villages have left paddy and other staple crops. The district now supplies vegetables to flood-prone Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha and has become the "vegetable basket of Jharkhand". Not only do the people now earn more, they also eat more nutritiously.

 

About a decade ago, the farmers grew vegetables and paddy in the ratio of 40:60. But now, paddy occupies only 25 per cent of the land. The economic survey of Jharkhand shows that some 80,000 ha have been brought under vegetable cultivation in the last decade. In 2000, vegetables were grown on 1.5 lakh ha which led to a drastic change in the agricultural employment pattern.

While in 1983 vegetable farming employed only a negligible number of farmers, it now employs 2.3 per cent of the state's farmers. Traders from as far away as Delhi throng the rural weekly markets to procure vegetables, cart them to Delhi, and sell at a huge profit.

To harness the potential of the new vegetable market, traders in the state are now demanding a special train to ferry vegetables to far off cities such as Bangalore and Mumbai. Further, farmers across the country are waking up to the potential of this ‘vegetable revolution'.

Will this shift to vegetable farming affect food security?

 

Another kind of security
 
Though the granary of India will continue to be Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and erstwhile Andhra Pradesh , the soil there is getting increasingly degraded and crop yields are either stagnating or falling. It is Bihar which holds out promise of enhanced cereal production.

 

In 2010, after six consecutive years of drought in Bundelkhand, Madhya Pradesh, the Government decided to increase the area under vegetables to 5 lakh acres. In 2012-13, the state received an award from New Delhi for the highest production of vegetables. Unlike cereal farming, vegetable farming is neither input nor labour intensive. The short crop season allows for higher output.

Another reason why farmers are opting for vegetables is the smaller size of farms. In 2010, the average land holding in the country was 1.22 ha against 2.28 ha in 1970.

Rice and wheat are less productive and consume more inputs - one cubic metre of water produces 330 grams of grains and 18 kg of vegetables. With the yield levels of cereals having either plateaued or declined, the farmer is faced with higher production costs.

The Planning Commission report indicates that vegetable production has been growing consistently, at 0.49 per cent in 2007-08, 1.69 per cent in 2008-09 and 6.4 per cent in 2010-11, superior to rice output trends. A true vegetable revolution is in the making, with small and marginal farmers contributing 70 per cent of total vegetable production. All this without any help from government.

The writer is a senior fellow of The Humboldt Foundation