The Hindu Business Line : Farming options in a global village

SUNDAY saw the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra claim a dubious century. A tribal farmer, Pardes Pachkawdu Jata, ended his life, just as 99 others before him had this year in the State's cotton growing belt. Evidently, he was unable to cope with the burden of mounting debt and free himself from the claws of money-lenders.

The situation in Vidharba is not yet as grim as in Andhra Pradesh. Reports of suicides by some 600 farmers led the Prime Minister to go on a tour of the affected areas. In Orissa, Bihar, West Bengal, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala too distress has been mounting among farmers. They are unable to recover even their investment, leave alone invest, be it in seeds, fertilisers or irrigation.

One common thread between farmers who were forced into desperate measures is the small size of their land holdings. The other obvious connect isthe mounting debt.

One would have expected the Centre to tackle this crisis in a systematic manner and not allow the States to face the flak. As a stagnant agriculture sector can halt the march towards economic superstardom, the Government has no option but to tackle the issue in all earnest.

The Centre is awaiting a joint study by the World Bank and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. The National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), a joint initiative of the World Bank and the Government of India, is to give the roadmap of Indian agriculture for the next 25 years.

A team of experts is looking at different aspects of a future scenario of agriculture to provide a context to investment planning and strategic decision-making. The team is expected to come out with a `scenario planning' for agriculture for the next 25 years, a sort of a Vision 2030. Thereafter, it will be up to the Government to act on it.

According to the NAIP team, one major challenge for the country will be to find gainful employment for 40 per cent of its population, as 65 per cent of the people are engaged in farming.

The NAIP team raised the question of how India can make the necessary strides towards viable agricultural land holding pattern. Contract farming is being touted as a viable alternative. As India integrates with the global economy, the agriculture sector too will have to integrate with viable global models.

Though the Chinese model of centralised land ownership model has been a success, it is unlikely that India will go that way. So that leaves the vast farm fields of India open for partnerships between the private and public sectors, with FDI being a distinct possibility.

A major water crisis in the country is imminent, whatever the model India chooses. Kerala having gone through the learning curve with cocoa and vanilla,, has now taken up rubber and forced the Government to ensure a minimum support price that may or may not reflect the market reality. The State also keeps filling up its rice fields by flattening nearby hillocks to create flat land that can be put to more commercial uses such as construction, leading to ecological imbalances. And this is a State that is up there on the graph as globally integrated.

The current fuel crisis may force the country to follow farming models such as the one embraced by Kerala and take up crops such as Jatropha. Perhaps it is also time we started worrying more about our depleting watertables and began planning for water security along the lines of food security.

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