To make farming more efficient, we need to care more about the farmers than the food.
Needless to say, India is an agrarian country and will remain an agrarian country for a long time. In a 2018 government survey, Indian farmers were around 50% of the entire country’s workforce and contribute to 17 to 18 percent of the entire country’s GDP.
The numbers are enough to convey the importance of the farmers in this nation. However, in India even though the farmers are easily the backbone of the country, they are also one of the worst treated working groups in the entire country.
Farmers committing suicide is so common that ‘Farmer Suicide’ is an official term. Statistics say that due to various reasons such as due to their inability to pay loans taken from private banks and landlords, less amount of rain or too much rain, pesticides gone wrong and much more. The phenomenon started from the 1970s and since 1995 an approximate 296,438 have killed themselves and even more recent statistics show that almost 43 farmers kill themselves each day.
Various schemes have been launched throughout the course of the history of free India starting all the way from the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru when he made a law against hoarding to contain the inflation of crops and prevent capitalists from earning money through produce to our most recent Prime Minister Narendra Modi who launched a most controversial slew of laws in a bid for modernity that set the beards of many farmers on a wrathful fire hungry of justice.
Some of the basics for modernity in farming we learnt in Grade 7 wherein we were taught methods such as HYV seeds, crop rotation, Integration of Technology in arrestation, division of labour and using proper fertilisers and pesticides. But the older I grew the more I learnt about how much international marketing and produce is valued, the importance of taxation in the market produce, laws concerning hoarding of produce to keep produce price from inflation caused by rich businessmen, economic laws, schemes to aid farmers and one of the lesser recognised but equally important points concerning the socio-economic disparities and the religious consternation amongst farmers such as the Dalit farmers basically being modern day slaves to richer Sikh farmers. Or the Maharashtrian Farmers being some of the richest landlords in the entire country.
The Future of the Indian Agriculture as rightly said by the Wire is a “Victim of its own past success- especially the green revolution”. Since a boost in the produce by the Green Revolution various environmental causes caused by the straining of the soil and Earth have happened deterring any sort of progress in produce being accomplished. The Depletion of the Water Table, emission of greenhouse gases and contamination of the surface and groundwater are just a few of them.
Withholding any opinion on the New Farm Laws, one of the newer accomplishments for the Modi Government is opening the Farmers’ Markets.
Previously, the markets were regulated by the Agriculture Produce Management Committee (APMC). This is one of the parts of the socialist economic policies of the government wherein even the farm produce was controlled by the government. This acted as a major deterrent to any private funding as the government and controlling the markets.
Now ideally, the private sector should get more involved in the farming sector therefore increasing the funding of the farmers and revolutionising farming as we know it. However, it is entirely possible that due to the large economic disparities amongst farmers and businessmen, Adani and Ambani do have the potential of becoming India’s behemoth farmers. That is the government should ideally make a few more policies to prevent farmers from getting exploited in the name of funding.
The Most Important Aspect is the involvement of Research and Development being integrated into various farming circles. This will help the framers produce the maximum amount of produce while involving maximum efficiency and division of labour amongst the workforce.
Indian was known as the Golden Bird, because every inch of our land is agriculturally usable and is blessed with more rivers than we can possibly count. Our country will definitely be saved from the degradation of our land will be ushered into a new golden age where all will be fed and wealthy.
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