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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | India’s agrarian distress: Is farming a dying occupation -Richard Mahapatra

India’s agrarian distress: Is farming a dying occupation -Richard Mahapatra

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published Published on Sep 24, 2020   modified Modified on Sep 26, 2020

-Down to Earth

Farmers across the globe are quitting their business, while the rural youth population is increasing. Who will grow our food?

In 2019, the world started talking about a structural crisis impacting the planet’s most critical job —food production. The world’s food demand is rising but the number of people quitting, or not joining, farming is consistently growing.

This raises an existential question: who will produce the food? In 2016, the average age of an Indian farmer was 50.1 years, according to the Input Survey 2011-12 (released in 2016) by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.

According to this survey, the maximum number of operational land holders (33.7 per cent), belonged to the age group of 41-50 years, followed by 33.2 per cent in the age group of 51-60 years. While this generation is reaching the age of retirement, the next one does not want to farm.

A majority of students graduating from agricultural universities switch to other professions. Only 1.2 per cent of 30,000 rural youth surveyed by non-profit Pratham for its 2017 Annual Status of Education Report aspired to be farmers.

While 18 per cent of the boys preferred to join the army, 12 per cent wanted to become engineers. Similarly, for girls, who play a major role in traditional farming, 25 per cent wanted to be teachers.

“The percentage of students in agricultural or veterinary courses around India amounts to less than half a per cent of all undergraduate enrollments,” Madhav Chavan, founder of Pratham, said.

“Although the percentage of population working in agriculture and related areas has now reduced to about 50 per cent, it is an area that could use a more educated and trained workforce considering our productivity is much less than that of world’s leading nations,” he added.

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Down to Earth, 24 September, 2020, https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/agriculture/india-s-agrarian-distress-is-farming-a-dying-occupation-73527?fbclid=IwAR2L4QaPuXcoFnOJ1azelvd7xr6z1gV419Es58kl5GXdXPhPWtxizHYVB1g


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