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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Pulse of the matter: Manufacturing a dal crisis, short-changing both farmer and consumer -Yogesh Pawar

Pulse of the matter: Manufacturing a dal crisis, short-changing both farmer and consumer -Yogesh Pawar

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published Published on Oct 26, 2015   modified Modified on Oct 26, 2015
-DNA

Wondering about the plight of the rural population facing successive droughts which has to buy pulses, South Asia Network for Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) laments how no benefit of the price hike is reaching actual pulse farmers.

While most link the current tur (pigeon pea) dal crisis with raging market prices, storage issues, hoarding and economics, a new study highlighting the making of the crisis - by South Asia Network for Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) - insists, “This has to do with systemic apathy for low input, sustainable agriculture which uses less water and is practised by vulnerable groups who don’t enjoy blessings of any lobby,” says the report which points out, “Only importing pulses or increasing minimum selling price of pulses on paper will not help.”  

Wondering about the plight of the rural population facing successive droughts which has to buy pulses, the report laments how no benefit of the price hike is reaching actual pulse farmers.

Looting farmers

It is something grassroots pulse farmers have been crying themselves hoarse about for a long time. Like Osmanabad’s Ashok Pawar who points out that the tur in the market now is 2014’s yield.

“It was sold to middle men and the market committee at low rates as production was dismal due to late rains and drought followed by unseasonal rainfall. That tur is now being sold at a record price, while short-changed farmers watch helplessly.”

According him this “playing with lives of pulse farmers,” is a repeat of the 2013 cruelty. “Many of us are still recovering from losses and debts from then, only to be hit by another bigger crisis. Why won’t farmers kill themselves?”

He isn’t alone. Sachin Gawli, a young farmer and student who had planted urad (black gram) and moong (green gram) in part of his field in the drought-stricken Latur district of Maharashtra this year got really low prices for his yield as he was forced to sell early to make ends meet. The severe drought ensured pulse production fell to record lows. Pawar got only 1-1.5 quintals of urad, which will sell for Rs 11,000/quintal.

“Although Rs 11,000 is much higher than the MSP, it does not make a difference as the production is extremely low.” Gawli is worse off because he did not make even that much.

“I had to sell at Rs. 8,000 per quintal in early October. Both farmers have sugarcane on their fields too and insist they will continue to water the sugarcane, a 100% irrigated crop, even if means less production of tur or the remaining urad/moong in their field. Per acre, sugarcane will give them an assured profit of Rs 30,000 while the profit from pulses is only Rs 7-8,000 per acre."

"Although pulses are hardy crops and need little water, they too need water in times of stress,” the report points out and asks, “With farmers diverting irrigation to crops with assured returns, how’ll pulse production grow?” It further underlines, “Without incentives, any growth in pulses in such circumstances, will be at the cost of the farmer, who has been subsiding urban customers enough already.”

While pulse prices rage, the fact that farmers are not secure about returns from pulses highlights issues which have worsened the pulse crisis exponentially, explains the report. “Though split dals are the primary source of protein for India where 80% of the population suffers from insufficient protein intake, pulse production has recorded less than 1% annual growth in the past 40 years!”

This is less than half of the growth rate in Indian human population. “The productivity rise is not spectacular either,” highlights the report. “Per capita net pulse availability has declined from around 60g/day in the 50s to 40g/day in the 80s and further to around 35g/day in 2000s (Source: India’s Pulse Scenario, National Food Security Mission)

Declining production, rising imports

The 4th agricultural estimates brought out by the Union Ministry of Agriculture, pulse production in 2014-15 has come down to 17.2 mn tonnes as against the target of 19.5 mn tonnes. In 2013-14 it was 19.25 Million Tons. Even in the drought of 2012-13, the production was more than the current year at 18.34 tons.

“Main reasons behind the decline are drought in pulse-growing zones, affecting kharif  pulses (mainly urad and moong) and unseasonal rains affecting rabi ones (masur and gram),” says the report which points out, “More than 80% area under pulses in India doesn’t have protective irrigation cover and vagaries of rainfall are catastrophic, especially for kharif pulses, which have a short growing span.”

While India’s pulse production is nowhere close to its demand. Imports of pulses are increasing year after year, at a huge cost. This is despite India being the biggest producer of pulses accounting for 24.5% share of pulse production in the world. Other major producers of pulses in the world are Myanmar (7.3%), Canada (7.2%), China (6.4%), Brazil (5.1%), Nigeria (3.9 %) , US (3.2%), Australia (3.1%) and Ethiopia (2.9%) (FAO Stats).

In India major pulse-producing Indian states are the ones which face maximum droughts and depend heavily on rain fed agriculture, points out the report. “Maharashtra tops the area and production of tur at an average of 11.34 lakh ha or 30% area and production of 8.3 lakh tonnes or 32.9% of the country. It is followed by Karnataka, which is half in both area and production.”  

National Food Security Mission figures show how overall, Rajasthan leads in kharif pulses production closely followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka and UP while MP leads in rabi pulse production followed by UP, AP and Maharashtra.

Within the states, pulses are grown on rainfed, light soils with meager irrigation cover. For example in Maharashtra, which is one of the leading producers, Vidarbha region has 40% area and 40% production of pulses, followed by Marathwada which accounts for 35% area and 35% production of pulses. Most of this area is rain-fed. (Kelkar Committee Report 2013)

Farmers’ pulse aversion

Logically, if pulses need little water, little processing, fetch such great prices, are always in demand and if we lose so much foreign exchange in buying pulses from Canada, Myanmar and Australia, why are farmers not planting more, asks the report.

“Why is area and quantity of sugarcane increasing in leaps and bounds, when it needs huge amounts of water, fertilizers and is not even a food crop? Sugarcane production exceeds our needs, but production of pulses is declining and area under pulses is growing at a snail’s pace?”

It hits the nail on the head by further asking: “Why is it that water-intensive sugar, costs about Rs 28/kg in the market, but gives the farmer an assured return of about Rs 20,000/acre, while pulses, which don’t need water or intensive fertilisers, are processed only primarily and cost about 150 Rs/Kg still give the farmer a paltry Rs 7,000-8,000/acre?”

Admitting that these are perplexing questions, water rights activist Parineeta Dandekar of the SANDRP asks, “From the prism of water resources, low-input, sustainable agriculture and marginal farmers, one can’t have a better mascot of sustainability than pulses.”

According to her protective irrigation offers a solution. “Marathwada grows sugarcane on 2.3 lakh ha. If 50% of this is converted into drip or other non water-intensive crops, it’d mean availability of an additional 2,161.2 MCM water. If this is supplied to provide protective irrigation to pulses, it will mean 21.6 lakh ha additional area under irrigated pulses.  Even if we assume that this area was already under rain-fed tur with rain-fed yield of 750 kg/ha, the net additional production possible with this irrigation is 1.6 mn tonnes which translates into an additional income of Rs 70,500 mn.”

In fact what Dandekar points out is close to the National Food Security Mission target of increasing pulse production by 2 mn tonnes. But won’t sugarcane farmer resist shifting to pulses completely given the poorer returns? “If we expect a shift to happen, pricing and procurement policy of pulses should reflect their true value,” says Dandekar who adds, “the government wull have to get proactive in supporting drip irrigation, like it is being done in Solapur right now through the efforts of Collector Tukaram Mundhe.”

She admits it will also require better groundwater legislation, a better Climate Change Action Plan and a robust and honest Crop Insurance to guard farmers against losses in time of extreme weather events.

“That won’t happen unless government recognises invaluable services pulse farmers provide, and reward them for the same. The fertiliser, power and irrigation subsidy that state provides to a sugarcane farmer is more than Rs 10,000 per capita per year and government needs to seriously consider such subsidy to the pulses farmer too,” says Dandekar

Former Commission for Agricultural Costs & Prices chairperson Ashok Gulati, indicates how capital costs of irrigating a hectare of land in Maharashtra is around Rs 6.6 lakh. According to the White Paper on Finances by the Government of Maharashtra (2015), in the year 2013-14 the cost of electricity given to farm pumps, borne by the government is Rs 3,695 crores. 46% of this subsidy flows to only five districts, with Solapur cornering maximum.

Rain-fed pulse farmers neither get any part of this irrigation funding, nor have the privilege of an electricity subsidy. In doing so, they help save a huge amount of public money, while producing the most important protein source. “The government should provide direct incentives to pulse farmers, not limited to the measly MSP, which though increased over the years, never reaches the farmer,” pleads Dandekar.

Climate-friendly crop

India just published its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) in tackling challenges of Climate Change, ahead of the Paris Climate Change Negotiations. While promoting newer, and supposedly “cleaner” technologies, we continue to neglect the strong contribution that dryland farmers, forest dwelling communities, fisher-folk have been making for years while eking out a very modest living. We are willing to spend thousands of crores in Climate Friendly technologies, but are not ready to acknowledge, incentivise and encourage these groups.

Most cash crops receive NPK fertilizers, in which N stands for nitrogen. These fertilizers are produced mainly from natural gas and their production is energy intensive with a high on carbon footprint, they are also subsidised. When nitrogen-rich fertilizers are applied to soils, soil micro-organisms convert some of this nitrogen to nitrous oxide, a gas which escapes to the atmosphere. This powerful greenhouse gas has 298 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, India comes a close third in Nitrous Oxide emissions in the world, following China and the US.

Pulses need no nitrogen application as they themselves fix atmospheric nitrogen into the soil. This means that a pulse-growing farming is not only taking less water from the system and using less energy, she/he is also emitting less greenhouse gases and is in fact, enriching the soil with nitrogen. These nitrogen-fixing  benefits can be passed on, ranging upto 31-97 kg/ha to the soil for next succeeding crop.

Even in terms of processing, pulses need only de-husking and separation into dals, a primary process which is less energy intensive, than say, sugar factories, which not only consume power but also pollute water resources. The husk is a valuable cattle feed. The processing can and should happen at village level itself, so that it provides additional employment and value addition at the village level.

High benefits, low returns

Despite this what is the support pulse farmers get from the ‘welfare state?’ According to 2014-15 CACP report, although MSP of pulses have been raised on paper, it is meaningless as hardly any procurement happens from farmers.  The two most important procurement agencies of the Government of India namely FCI and NAFED were set up with the main objectives of procuring notified commodities at MSP, if and when the market prices go below MSP. “These agencies have been in the existence for over 50 years and 30 years respectively. Yet, the benefits of MSP bypass a large section of farmers, rendering pricing policy and procurement operations ineffective,” according to the CACP’s own 2015 report.

Farmers on the ground like Gawli laugh at how they hear of MSP only in newspapers and TV and not in agri-produce mandis where pulses are sold. “We end up exploited while fixing pulse prices by middlemen, who playing on farmer’s need for immediate cash. And the government is nowhere to be seen in these mandis where farmers sell produce.”

Contrast this with the struggle for Fair Remunerative Price (FRP) and government interventions, for sugarcane farmers. Even the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has to engage with the sugarcane FRP discussions, attention which the pulse farmers can only dream of. This despite the fact that PM Modi himself, during his address at the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) said in 2014, “The poor get their requirement of protein from pulses. Take it as a challenge that in a few years there will be no need to bring edible oils and pulses from outside. This is a national challenge and it must be taken up as a priority.”

According to the CACP report: “Lack of robust and dependable procurement machinery for oilseeds and pulses do not enthuse farmers to diversify towards these crops as NAFED has not been able to procure significant quantities of pulses and oilseeds. Unless some credible measures to strengthen procurement of these commodities are taken, farmers of other countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia will continue to benefit at the cost of Indian farmers. The Commission recommends to radically restructure NAFED so as to enable it to accomplish its main objective function of procurement of pulses and oilseeds if and when market prices go below their respective MSPs.”

In the absence of procurement, the “massive increase” in MSP as claimed again and again by NFSM not only remains on paper but also does not even reflect production costs? According to agricultural expert from Vidarbha, Rahul Bais, MSP of tur, moong and urad are much lower than their actual production costs which the farmer bears. In his words, “Unless we ‘give up on the subsidy that we continue to pocket from small marginal farmers,’ India’s agriculture scenario won’t improve.” And this is indeed worrying with agri-GDP likely to post just 1.1% growth in 2014-15 compared to 3.7% in 2013-14. The impact of this fall on farm economy is creating a disastrous vicious cycle.

“Till the country doesn’t learn to value the farmer who addresses its protein security, self sufficiently, with lesser water and enriches and correct the tilt towards high input cash crops, we are setting ourselves up for greater crises,” opines Dandekar.

One cannot but agree... And yet, the question remains, will the government act?

DNA, 24 October, 2015, http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-pulse-of-the-matter-manufacturing-a-dal-crisis-short-changing-both-farmer-and-consumer-2138214


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