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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Small holdings threat to farm sector growth by Arvind Singh Bisht

The pattern of land distribution has rendered rural landscape of UP disfavourable for farming. The precursor for this is the fragmentation of cultivable land into a large number of `small landholdings'. The process set under the demographic pressure, has caused marginalisation of a vast majority of farmers and posed a severe challenge to the prospects of rural economy and the growth of agriculture in future.

Going by the official figure, UP has a total 2.25 crore landholdings with a net cultivable area of 179 lakh hectares. Of them, 1.75 crore are marginal holdings of around one acre each. The area under them is well over 40% of the total cultivated land. The process of marginalisation of holdings is further on the increase with each passing year.

"This is indeed a wake up call,'' said VS Vyas, a well-known agrarian economist and a member of the PM's Economic Advisory Council. "Bulk of the small farmers are below poverty line (BPL). Nearly one-third of them belong to SC/ST. Neglect of marginal and small farmers may result in a divide within the rural sector,'' he added.

While underlining the need for institutional support to these sections, Vyas said the concept of group farming or cooperative farming should be introduced in order to increase the size of holdings and plough their scarce resources for optimum output.

A quick glance at the land distribution pattern shows that Varanasi has the highest 98% of marginal farmers having a landholding of around one acre. Likewise, the pattern has been more or less the same in 25 other districts where the number of average marginal farmers are around 80%. Incidentally, most of these districts fall in Eastern UP, which is most backward region with low agriculture yield.

No different is the situation in Central UP where the number of marginal farmers is also very high ranging between 40% to 50%. As a result, the area is too no better in its agriculture yield and productivity.

The major drawback of the existing agriculture policy is its failure to address the issue of marginal farmers. The yield from the small holdings is pitifully low. The scope for improvement holds no promise, as their holders lack in surplus cash to buy necessary inputs and technical knowhow. In fact, a vast majority of them live in abject poverty without sufficient means to sustain their family.

Adding to their owe is the lack of institutional support to them. As these marginal farmers are living below poverty line, banks and financial institutions stay away from giving them loans. The result is that they continue to depend on money-lenders, who exploit them by charging much high interest rate. This way they are no better than agricultural labourers, said president of Kisan Jagriti Manch, Sudhir Kumar Panwar.

He said today there were too many farmers with too less land to fend their families. The implication of this, he said was that that agriculture had become like a daily dread for marginal farmers. While the able-bodied persons of the family migrated to urban areas in search of better jobs, only hapless stayed back under compulsions to live on agriculture in rural areas, he said.

A comparative account shows that the number of marginal farmers are much more in Eastern and Central UP than that of Western UP. Notably, there is also a correlation between the landholding size and productivity. This is proved by the fact that West UP is much better in its agriculture productivity than that of the two regions. However, in contrast, Bundelkhand region too has relatively higher number of large holdings. But due to drought and infertility, its productivity is also not very high.

When asked to comment, director, Giri Institute, AK Singh said: "The major challenge before the planners is to make these small holdings productive and meaningful.'' He suggested that group farming was the answer of this problem and for this purpose, the government should evolve some mechanism. This would not only increase the productivity, but also increase the collective strength of farmers, who otherwise were devoid of requisite resources to buy better farming techniques. "Not only would productivity increase through collective farming, but rural poverty and migration of people to urban areas would also be checked,'' he added.