With shrinking farm sizes and lack of accurate land records, farmers find it difficult to generate enough income to provide for their households
From farm subsidies to farm loan waivers, the Indian government spends crores on farmer welfare, but these efforts will be inadequate unless they can tackle an increasingly daunting barrier: lack of land. The provisional figures from the latest agriculture census reveals how land—the most critical input for agriculture—is getting more fragmented.
Since the first agriculture census over 45 years ago, the number of farms in India has more than doubled from 71 million in 1970-71 to 145 million in 2015-16, while the average farm size more than halved from 2.28 hectares (ha) to 1.08ha.
Smaller, more numerous farms have been driven by rural population growth. Between 1970-71 and 2010-11, the number of farms increased by 194%, almost exactly in line with rural population, which increased by 189%. As Ramesh Chand and others pointed out in a 2011 Economic and Political Weekly research paper, this relationship is a reflection of India’s inheritance pattern, which leads to farms divided between multiple heirs.
Within India though, there is significant variation in farm sizes. With an average size of 5ha, Nagaland is home to India’s largest farms. Punjab and Haryana, two states known for their agricultural output, also have larger farm sizes (3.6ha in Punjab and 2.2ha in Haryana). However, these are exceptions. The majority of India’s farms (86%) are less than 2ha. The bulk of which are located in the poorer states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
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