New Delhi, Jan 6 In order to increase farmers’ income as well as ensure nutrition security for the country, yields have to be increased with the use of technology and more land should be diverted for horticulture, animal husbandry and fisheries, said Ashok Dalwai, CEO, National Rainfed Area Authority, here on Friday.

“Because we have been producing more cereal, and less pulses, fats and vegetables, people are unable to access the latter at affordable prices. It is time India looked at nutrition security rather than food security,” Dalwai said, adding that we should ensure that agricultural produce includes the three major nutrients, namely, carbohydrates, proteins and fats, and three non-major nutrients, namely, vitamins, minerals and amino acids. Despite being a global power in agriculture production, the country faced malnutrition.

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Speaking on ‘Doubling Farmers’ Income’ at the businessline Agri and Commodity Summit 2023 in New Delhi, he said the trend towards horticulture production that fetches better earnings for the farmers as well as ensures better nutrients, has taken firm root.

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Horticulture output in 2021-22 at 336 million tonnes outpaced foodgrain production at 316 million tonnes.

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However, in order to ensure adequate supplies of food commodities to meet our requirements, Dalwai said we need to increase productivity. “The government’s focus is on increasing productivity. So we can produce more from less, as the land is limited and it has to be diverted for other purposes such as industries, infrastructure and habitation. Between 2001-02 and 2011-12, one million hectares of land was diverted for other purposes,” he said.

Dalwai, who chaired the committee on Doubling Farmers’ Income said, “We will evaluate the status after the deadline of 2022-23. But we have been using some proxy indicators to know how we are progressing. And we have found that we are making good progress. The policies are on the right track. The programmes support the policies and then there is a translation at the field level,” he said.

The committee had conducted a situation assessment survey, which estimated the monthly income of an agriculture household Rs 6,426 in 2012-13. “We extrapolated that monthly income to 2015-16 taking into account inflation between 2012-13 and 2015-16. The monthly average income worked out at Rs 8,059 at 2015-16 prices. Taking into account the inflation factor, the real income at the end line of 2022-23, would be Rs 14,339. That is the actual target for us,” he said.

Two factors that are said to impact the goal of doubling farmers’ income are, first, the farm income of agriculture households, and the second non-farm income, which is considered to be non-farm employments such as MNREGA or other government or non-government earnings.

Dalwai said to achieve the goal, farm income should grow at 10.4 per cent and non-farm income at 5.7 per cent. “Based on these estimates we can say that farmers’ income will not exactly double, but will near double at around Rs 14,339 by the deadline of 2022-23.”

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