-Livemint.com
Farming activities comprise more than half of the total average monthly income for agricultural households, as per the latest survey by Nabard
Bengaluru/ New Delhi: Farmers may be looking for alternative avenues of income, but it is too soon to write off the significance of agriculture in rural India, data from the recently released Nabard All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey (NAFIS) shows.
An initial reading of the survey findings seems to suggest that earnings from farm-related activities—cultivation and livestock rearing—contributed just 43% to average monthly income of agricultural households in 2015-16, suggesting the growing importance of non-farm sectors in rural India.
However, disaggregated data on wage earnings of these households, accessed by Mint from Nabard, shows that about 40% of the wage earnings of these families came from working as farm hands; for non-farm households this ratio is about 25%.
So when wages from working as farm hands are added to earnings from agriculture, the contribution of farming activities to average monthly earnings of agricultural households rises to 57%, showing that bulk of their earnings is still farm-dependent.
Please click here to read more.