Chapter-7: Agriculture and Food Management

March 17, 2018 August 16, 2022

What is the current Gross Capital Formation (GCF) in Agriculture and Allied Sectors?

The Gross Capital Formation (GCF) in Agriculture and Allied Sectors relative to GVA in this sector has been showing a fluctuating trend from 18.2 per cent in 2011-12 to 16.4 per cent in 2015-16

The Gross Capital Formation in agriculture and allied sectors as a proportion to the total GCF showed a decline from 8.3 per cent in 2014-2015 to 7.8 per cent in 2015-16. This decline can be attributed to reduction in private investment.

What are survey notes on Policy for Women Farmers?

Women play a significant and crucial role in agricultural development and allied fields including in the main crop production, livestock production, horticulture, post-harvest operations, agro/social forestry, fisheries, etc. is a fact long taken for granted (NCW, 2001). For sustainable development of the agriculture and rural economy, the contribution of women to agriculture and food production cannot be ignored.

As per Census 2011, out of total female main workers, 55 per cent were agricultural labourers and 24 per cent were cultivators. However, only 12.8 per cent of the operational holdings were owned by women, which reflect the gender disparity in ownership of landholdings in agriculture. Moreover, there is concentration of operational holdings (25.7 per cent) by women in the marginal and small holdings categories.

With growing rural to urban migration by men, there is ‘feminisation’ of agriculture sector, with increasing number of women in multiple roles as cultivators, entrepreneurs, and labourers. Globally, there is empirical evidence that women have a decisive role in ensuring food security and preserving local agro-biodiversity. Rural women are responsible for the integrated management and use of diverse natural resources to meet the daily household needs (FAO, 2011). This requires that women farmers should have enhanced access to resources like land, water, credit, technology and training which warrants critical analysis in the context of India. In addition, the entitlements of women farmers will be the key to improve agriculture productivity. The differential access of women to resources like land, credit, water, seeds and markets needs to be addressed. Towards this, Government has been implementing various schemes which help improve the entitlements of women farmers, which will prove to be advantageous in bridging the policy gaps which exist in the sector.

The following measures have been taken to ensure mainstreaming of women in agriculture sector:

Earmarking at least 30 per cent of the budget allocation for women beneficiaries in all ongoing schemes/programmes and development activities.
Initiating women centric activities to ensure benefits of various beneficiary-oriented programs/schemes reach them.
Focusing on women self-help group (SHG) to connect them to micro-credit through capacity building activities and to provide information and ensuring their representation in different decision-making bodies.
Recognising the critical role of women in agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has declared 15th October of every year as Women Farmer’s Day.

With women predominant at all levels- production, pre-harvest, post-harvest processing, packaging, marketing- of the agricultural value chain, to increase productivity in agriculture, it is imperative to adopt gender specific interventions. An ‘inclusive transformative agricultural policy’ should aim at gender-specific interventions to raise productivity of small farm holdings, integrate women as active agents in rural transformation, and engage men and women in extension services with gender expertise.

What are survey notes on cropping patterns?

India ranks first, with 179.8 Mha (9.6 percent of the global net cropland area) of net cropland area according to United States Geological Survey 2017. The pattern of cropping is determined by various factors like agro-climatic conditions, farm size, prices, profitability and government policies. A diversified cropping pattern will help in mitigating the risks faced by farmers in terms of price shocks and production/harvest losses. With 9.6 per cent of the global net cropland area, India has tremendous potential for crop diversification and to make farming a sustainable and profitable economic activity. In the following paragraph, it is examined whether there has been adequate crop diversification in India over time.

The Index of Crop Diversification has been computed for major States and All India to examine whether there has been major changes in the cropping patterns across States. The index value ranges between 0 and 1 and higher the value, greater the diversification.
It is evident that there is a declining inter-temporal behaviour in crop diversification for the States like Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Among these States, the decline in the index has been sharp for Odisha.
The index for the State declined from 0.740 in 1994-95 to 0.703 in 2005-06. The year 2010-11 saw a steeper decline in the index for the State as it fell to 0.380 and subsequently to 0.340 in 2014-15.

Two of the States Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand have shown increasing values in crop diversification. The crop diversification scenario for India as a whole appears to be almost stable throughout the periods

In Odisha, by 2014-15, 80 per cent of the cropped area has been under rice, around 10 per cent under other pulses and around 4 percent under other food crops. In Punjab too, wheat and paddy cover 83 per cent of the cultivable area of the State. The issues related to mono-culture as witnessed in Odisha and Punjab are declining productivity, lower fertilizer response ratio, degradation of soil health and declining profitability of cultivation.

Crop diversification needs to be encouraged to improve soil health, productivity and thereby profitability of cultivation. The inverse relationship between change in crop diversification index and variability of output can be seen in the plot of States (excluding outliers Odisha and Jharkhand)

There is a need to diversify into high value crops and horticulture crops for which Government has taken several measures. Crops Diversification Programme is being implemented by the Government in original green revolution states viz. Punjab, Haryana and in Western UP to diversify paddy area towards less water requiring crops like oilseeds, pulses, coarse cereal, agro-forestry and shifting of tobacco farmers to alternative crops/cropping system in tobacco growing States viz. Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

What are survey notes on Direct Benefit Transfer in Fertiliser sector?

The Government of India has introduced Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system for fertilizer subsidy on Pilot Basis with effect from October, 2016. Under the proposed fertilizer DBT system, 100 per cent subsidy on various fertilizer grades shall be released to the fertilizer companies on the basis of actual sales made by the retailers to the beneficiaries. The Sale of all subsidized fertilizers to farmers/buyers will be made through Point of Sale (PoS) devices installed at each retailer shop and the beneficiaries will be identified through Aadhar Card, KCC, Voter Identity Card etc.

The implementation of the DBT Scheme requires development of PoS devices at every retailer shop, training of retailers for using PoS device, Stock initialization in the PoS device after verifying the physical stock at retail point, before making sales transactions. Presently, the DBT scheme is under implementation in 17 pilot districts. Based on the deployment of PoS device in different States, preparedness of State Government, Lead fertilizer Suppliers/Fertilizer companies, the Department has drawn up a detailed action plan to extend the DBT Scheme to other States in a phased manner. As on 22nd December, 2017, 14 States/UTs have been brought under DBT Framework.

The benefits of the DBT Scheme are:

The proposed DBT framework is a beneficiary driven subsidy payment mechanism being initiated at national level.
It creates Aadhaar seeded data base of beneficiaries and provides transaction visibility at the level of buyers.
By linking the actual sales to subsidy payments, it facilitates a more transparent and faster tracking of funds along the value chain i.e. from manufacturers to beneficiaries.
Diversion of fertilizers is expected to be minimized.

What are survey notes on Irrigation?

The all India percentage of net irrigated area to total cropped area was 34.5 per cent, which makes a large segment of cultivation dependent on rainfall. The State-wise percentage distribution of net irrigated area to total cropped area shows that only two States, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh have more than 50 per cent net irrigated area to total cropped area and only seven states have above 34 percent in 2014-15

On Agricultural workers by 2050

According to the World Bank estimates, half of the Indian population would be urban by the year 2050. It is estimated that percentage of agricultural workers of total work force would drop to 25.7 per cent by 2050 from 58.2 per cent in 2001. Thus, there is a need to enhance the level of farm mechanization in the country. Due to intensive involvement of labour in different farm operations, the cost of production of many crops is quite high. Human power availability in agriculture also increased from about 0.043 KW/ha in 1960-61 to about 0.077 KW/ha in 2014-15. However, as compared to tractor growth, increase in human power in agriculture is quite slow

Survey Notes on Policy to Promote Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA)

Climate change incidence on agriculture can be in the form of increased variability in temperature and rainfall and intensity of extreme weather events like drought and flood ultimately creating disturbance to agro-ecosystems, thereby impacting farmers and farming community. This necessitates the need to address adaptation and rural development in an integrated manner, so as to achieve climate resilient development. It is in this context that there is emergence of the concept and significance of ‘Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA).

Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA)

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach that helps to guide actions needed to transform and reorient agricultural systems to effectively support development and ensure food security in a changing climate. CSA aims to tackle three main objectives: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to climate change; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions wherever possible.

CSA is an approach for developing agricultural strategies to secure sustainable food security under climate change. CSA provides the means to help stakeholders identify agricultural strategies suitable to their local conditions.

Mainstreaming CSA

Mainstreaming CSA and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) policies in India are still at its nascent stage. In order to address the risk associated with Climate variability and climate change, climate resilient technologies are being demonstrated in 153 model villages under KVK covering 23 states under “National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture” (NICRA). In addition, 623 contingency plans have been prepared so far and hosted on ICAR /DAC websites and circulated to all state agriculture departments to manage various weather aberrations such as droughts, floods, cyclones, hailstorms, heat and cold waves. The contingency plans are useful for preparedness and real time implementation towards sustainability of agriculture production system in the events of weather aberrations and extreme climatic events.

KCC & Interest subvention:

The loans are available to Kisan Credit Card (KCC) holding small and marginal farmers at interest subvention of 2 per cent on such storages for a period of upto six months. This will help the farmers to sell when they find the market is buoyant, and avoid distress sale. It is, therefore, needful for the small and marginal farmers to keep their KCCs alive.

What are survey notes on Electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM)?

The Government has been undertaking market reforms with a view to ensuring that the farmers benefit from remunerative prices for their produce in the market. The electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) that was launched by Government on April, 2016 aims at integrating the dispersed APMCs through an electronic platform and enable price discovery in a competitive manner, to the advantage of the farmers.
While the farmers are advised to undertake on-line trade, it is also important that they avail themselves of post-harvest loans by storing their produce in the accredited warehouses.

What are survey notes on Interest Subvention Scheme (ISS)?

The Interest Subvention Scheme (ISS) has been operational since 2006-07. Under this scheme, the farmers can avail concessional crop loans of upto Rs.3 lakh at 7 per cent rate of interest. It also provides for an additional subvention of 3 per cent for prompt repayment within a period of one year from the date of advance. The scheme for 2017-18 will help farmers to avail of short term crop loans up to Rs. 3 lakh payable within one year at only 4 per cent per annum.

As a measure to check distress sale, post-harvest loans for storage in accredited warehouses against Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (NWRs) are available for upto 6 months for KCC holding small & marginal farmers. The Interest Subvention Scheme will continue for one year and it will be implemented by NABARD and RBI.

The interest subvention will be given to Public Sector Banks (PSBs), Private Sector Banks, Cooperative Banks and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) on use of own funds and to NABARD for refinance to RRBs and Cooperative Banks. The salient features of the scheme are as follows:

The Central Government will provide interest subvention of 5 per cent per annum to all prompt payee farmers for short term crop loan upto one year for loan upto Rs. 3 lakhs borrowed by them during the year 2017-18. Farmers will thus have to effectively pay only 4 per cent as interest. In case farmers do not repay the short term crop loan in time they would be eligible for interest subvention of 2 per cent as against 5 per cent available above.
The Central Government will provide approximately Rs. 20,339 crore as interest subvention for 2017-18.
In order to give relief to small and marginal farmers who would have to borrow at 9 per cent for the post-harvest storage of their produce, the Central Government has approved an interest subvention of 2 per cent i.e. an effective interest rate of 7 per cent for loans upto 6 months.
To provide relief to the farmers affected by natural calamities, the interest subvention of 2 per cent will be provided to Banks for the first year on the restructured amount.
In case farmers do not repay the short term crop loan in time they would be eligible for interest subvention of 2 per cent as against available above.
The ISS is to make available at ground level, agricultural credit for Short Term crop loans at an affordable rate to give a boost to agricultural productivity and production in the country.

What are survey notes on National Food Security Act?

With a view to make receipt of foodgrains under TPDS a legal right, Government of India has enacted NFSA which came into force w.e.f. 5th July, 2013. The Act provides for coverage of upto 75 per cent of the rural population and upto 50 per cent of the urban population for receiving subsidized foodgrains under Targeted Public Distribution System(TPDS), thus covering about two-third of the population.
The eligible persons identified by the States/UTs are entitled to receive 5 kg of foodgrains per person per month at subsidized prices of Rs.3/2/1 per kg for rice/wheat/nutri-grains (coarse grains). The existing Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) households, which constitute the poorest of the poor, continue to receive 35 kg of foodgrains per household per month.
As on 1st November, 2016 NFSA has been implemented in all the 36 States/UTs and they are receiving monthly allocation of foodgrains under NFSA.
During the year 2017-18, Government of India has so far allocated 606.43 lakh tons of foodgrains to States/UTs/Other Welfare Scheme (OWS) etc.

Economic Costs of Foodgrains to FCI

The Economic Cost of foodgrains consists of three components, namely, pooled cost of grains, procurement incidentals and the cost of distribution. Pooled cost of food grains is the weighted MSP of the stock of foodgrains available with FCI at the time of calculating the economic cost.

Open Market Sale Scheme (Domestic)

In addition to maintaining buffer stocks and for making a provision for meeting the requirement of the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) and Other Welfare Schemes (OWS), FCI on the instructions from the Government sells excess stocks out of Central Pool through Open Market Sale Scheme (Domestic) [OMSS (D)] in the open market from time to time at predetermined prices to achieve the following objectives:-