60% of farmers in India, who cultivate less than 0.80 hectares of land,continue to be under the poverty line if they do not switch to a non-agricultural occupation. Overall, India’s agricultural output has been increasing on average 3.6% annually since 2011.
The blame goes to the government policies governing the food rather than the agriculture sector. The key problems identified are the trade restrictions specifically designed to keep domestic food inflation low, including frequent ban on exports and MSPs set mismatching the international prices. The Essential Commodities Act and the Agricultural Produce Market Committee Act, are as a few examples of regulations hampering price discovery for farmers.
Controls imposed by the government on movement of food and exports at the slightest hint of inflation going up prevented farmers from realising higher prices from exports.
The hardest and strictest measures to be taken by the government is to control the marketing of Agricultural produces in the APMC Mandies,which are not regulating the farmers market properly to achieve desired results for which the APMC Act was originally formulated. Rather at present the said act is giving counter productive results by harrassing the farmers by not facilitating them in getting the prices as per the farmers input cost + transportation + his profit so that he may earning shall become economically viable.
No comments:
Post a Comment