It is nobody’s case that problems of agriculture can be fixed by soil health cards, loan waivers, crop insurance or e-NAM.
The five-day long march of 30,000 farmers from Nashik to Mumbai has touched a chord with urban India. Even though some said they were implementing the agenda of ‘urban Naxalites’, the pictures of poor tribals and farmers, men and women, old and young, walking in heat, many without shoes, will continue to haunt policy makers selling dreams of new India.
So what was new this time? More than anything else, the orderliness of the long march rattled the financial capital of India and brought the focus to continuing distress of landless tribals and farmers.
Among all the Indian states, Maharashtra is a better-performing one in several ways. Its agriculture is more diversified than most other states. It has performed well in horticulture and exports grapes worth Rs 1,200 crore. It has functioning marketing infrastructure and has done better than most other states in adopting water-saving technologies like micro irrigation.
However, out of 137 lakh operational holdings, 78.6 per cent belonged to 107 lakh small and marginal farmers, who hold less than two hectares of land. The leaders of the protesting farmers would not be unaware of the fact that only 18 per cent of the cropped area in the state is irrigated. Sugarcane grown on just 4 per cent of gross cropped area in Maharashtra is almost entirely irrigated, and takes about 65 per cent of its irrigation water. Therefore, it is not surprising that production of sugarcane is likely to be 25 per cent higher this year while the production of kharif pulses and oilseeds declined by 46 per cent and 15 per cent respectively. It is clear that the rain-fed farmers experienced sharp decline in their income this year.
The situation in rabi is no better, and it is expected that the production of cereals and oilseeds will decline by 39 per cent and 73 per cent respectively. So, we should expect the distress to only aggravate as we reach the summer months.
Cotton is grown on 19 per cent of the cropped area but only 2.7 per cent area is under irrigation. To add to the misery of cotton farmers, a pink bollworm pest attack has affected large areas under cotton. Some reports suggest that about 35 lakh ha of cotton crop —about 84 per cent of area under cotton — has been affected by pink bollworm.
In December 2017, the state government had announced a compensation of Rs 39,000 per ha to cotton growers affected by pink bollworm, but it seems not a single farmer has received the compensation.
We still do not know how much area was covered under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna. If the insured cotton farmers can be paid their claims promptly, the crop insurance scheme will be considered successful. For this, the crop cutting experiments have to be conducted by the revenue department of state government and one hopes that long march will have persuadedthe state machinery to conduct them with speed and accuracy.
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