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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The seeds of discontent -Bina Agarwal

The seeds of discontent -Bina Agarwal

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published Published on Jun 16, 2017   modified Modified on Jun 16, 2017
-The Indian Express

India faces not just a farmers’ crisis, but a serious meltdown of farming families

Amongst the images of agitating farmers in Madhya Pradesh, it was striking to see how many were youngsters dressed in jeans and shirts — they were clearly not all farmers, but also farmers’ sons, unhappy with jobless growth. We are facing not just a farmers’ crisis today, but also a crisis of farming families, whose children want non-farm jobs.

Have we ever seriously asked farmers if they like farming? Only once, as far as surveys go. A Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) several years ago asked over 50,000 farmers across India: “Do you like farming as a profession?” Forty per cent said they did not. Ankush Agrawal (IIT-Delhi) and I analysed the SAS data. In our paper, “Do farmers really like farming? Indian Farmers in Transition” (Oxford Development Studies, 2017), we compared farmers who liked farming with those who did not. We found that dissatisfied farmers included both the most vulnerable and the well-off — the former due to low production, the latter due to higher aspirations.

The resource-poor farmers who disliked farming owned smaller plots (0.85 ha on average), compared to the 1.4 ha owned by those who liked farming; they had less access to irrigation, credit and crop insurance; they were less aware of minimum support prices (MSPs) and tended not to be members of farmers’ groups. All these factors matter for raising productivity and lowering risk, the two factors farmers emphasised: Two-thirds cited low profits and one-fifth cited riskiness for disliking farming. Irrigation is central to production. Crop insurance (only 3.8 per cent of all farmers had any) is key for protection against crop failure. Awareness of MSPs brings better returns. Access to cheaper credit encourages investment. Membership in farmers’ groups can reduce distress by providing support when farmers face indebtedness. (Ironically, loan waivers will not help the most vulnerable farmers — many çan’t access bank credit anyway and depend on moneylenders).

Age and gender also affect farmer satisfaction — younger farmers tended to be more dissatisfied, and women farmers more than men, understandably since few women own land and most face difficulties accessing irrigation, credit, inputs and markets. This has implications for productivity, since at least 35 per cent of our agricultural work force is female and likely to grow. And it has implications for food security since 75 per cent of rural women workers, versus 59 per cent of rural male workers, depend mainly on agriculture for a living (NSSO 2011-12). Indeed, unless we alleviate women’s constraints, future farmer agitations may be led by women.

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The Indian Express, 15 June, 2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-seeds-of-discontent-madhya-pradesh-farmers-crisis-4704397/


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