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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Doubling farmers' incomes differently -RG Chandramogan

Doubling farmers' incomes differently -RG Chandramogan

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published Published on Jan 3, 2019   modified Modified on Jan 4, 2019
-The Indian Express

Lowering production costs, and a policy shift from ‘managing shortages’ to ‘handling surpluses’, is the way forward for Indian agriculture

The government wants farmers’ incomes to double in five years by 2022. While a laudable objective, the reality today is that farmers are suffering stress, if not shrinkage, in their incomes. The demand for loan waivers, and political pressures to implement these, is only a reflection of this underlying reality vis-à-vis well-intentioned goals.

Let’s view these issues a little differently from the perspective of an industry — dairy — with which I am associated. Agriculture and allied activities, in 2015-16, contributed 17.7 per cent of India’s overall gross value added at current prices. But within this larger agriculture sector, milk’s share in output value was 19.7 per cent, which means one in every five rupees of farm income comes from it: Almost every farmer, irrespective of which main crop he or she grows, also produces some milk whose total value of output in 2015-16 was estimated at Rs 5.61 lakh crore.

Milk’s advantage is that it is sold daily and generates income round the year. This income is, moreover, steady — milk prices are generally not volatile unlike other agri-commodities — and a source of liquidity that can take care of the farmer’s day-to-day household expenses. It, therefore, reduces dependence upon the moneylender, at least to keep the home fires burning.

Unfortunately though, milk, too, in the recent period hasn’t been spared from the crisis facing other crops, arising largely from an inability and the lack of a framework to handle surpluses. Our policymakers are past masters at managing shortages — imposing stockholding limits on trade, banning/restricting exports, allowing duty-free imports, etc. But in the new scenario of surpluses and depressed crop realisations, all they are able to offer is unimplementable minimum support price (MSP) hikes and fiscally unaffordable farm loan waivers.

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The Indian Express, 3 January, 2019, https://indianexpress.com/article/india/doubling-farmers-incomes-differently-5520946/


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