Farming Solution In The Modern Day Agriculture

If government develops fair average quality norms for selling agri-produce, system can create grainless and commodityless ‘mandies’ (vegetable markets)

- Dr. Ravindra Pastor

Introduction: 

Presently, the Indian agriculture sector is going through its lowest phase in an age when the Indian economy is growing very fast. Two laws which have proven detrimental to Indian farmers in the last few years are the Law of Inheritance and the Agriculture Land Ceiling Act. Due to these two laws, land holding has become very small because as fathers die, the land gets divided among legal heirs; as a result, the land is getting divided every day with every new death, leading to 78 percent of land owners being small and marginal farmers. When a farmer has a very small piece of land, his agri-input requirement is very small. Hence, he purchases from the last person in the supply chain. If there are three people in the supply chain, he will pay three people’s profit and get his input, which proves not only costlier but is also of dubious quality and availability. Furthermore, when he grows any crop, his production yield is very low. He sells his harvest to the last person in the supply chain. So, if there are five people in the supply chain, then they will deduct their profit and give the resultant price to the farmer. This point marks the beginning of the vicious cycle of profit and loss in the Indian agriculture sector.

Now, the main buyers in market are wholesalers, processors and exporters, and they have three basic conditions:

First is Quantity - they need huge quantity;

Second is Quality – they need same and consistent quality; and

Third is Competitive price.

These three basic conditions of market cannot be fulfilled by small and marginal farmers and there is this huge supply chain full of middle men. Whenever the government tries to intervene in agri-marketing through the Minimum Support Price scheme or any other scheme, only these middle men benefit. The small or marginal farmers are never able to share in this advantage.