Bumper productions are good news but without adequate infrastructure in place for the movement of crops, a solution to farm distress can’t be found
A bumper crop production year after year seems to be India’s strength. Advance estimates released by the Agriculture Ministry predict that the total horticultural production, including fruits, vegetables, spices and flowers, until July this year will be 314.67 metric tonnes, as against 311.71 metric tonnes last year. Yet, we hear a lot of news about subsidised irrigation water, power, seeds and fertiliser to grow crops that often give surplus yield. Why do our farmers still need subsidies when their counterparts in other countries, despite producing only a part of the “bumper production”, are more self-reliant? We are circumspect whether it will augur well for the farmers or be yet another year of a struggle for right prices. In my interactions with the farmers, I came to know that a few issues and aspects of mobilisation of crops come up year after year. Discussing them in brief will give an idea of where we are lacking.
Need more and better warehouses: Typically, the demand-supply dynamics that rule the market ensure that prices plummet during harvest and surge during the lean period. This means that the farmer effectively gets less for the produce despite more than usual harvest. One of the most effective ways to address this irony is to create an ecosystem of well-positioned and well-equipped warehouses across the country. This will help farmers save the crops to deal with times when there is no harvest in spite of the demand. In fact, one of the reasons why farmers in other nations have a better earning despite lesser yield is that they have been able to monetise their limited harvest in the best possible manner. Apart from enabling profitable access to the market, these storage centres can play an important role in facilitating access of crops to food processing and packaging units. To be able to reach these units will be a more commercially-viable option for the farmers and a good way to utilise the surplus crop.
Improve access to roads and vehicles: In continuation with the earlier topic comes the question, where do we build these storage centres? Highways, one of the main routes to transport agri-produce from one part to the other, can be a rather opportune site. Most farmers choose roadways over any other means of transport. However, few can afford an air-conditioned transport that would save the produce from the heat, moisture or cold. As a result, a part of the harvest is lost in transit. Locating warehouses on the highway can ensure that the farmers are able to save their crops until a more favourable time to sell them. However, access to these will depend on the condition of roads and availability of vehicles. While most roads in the interiors of India have potholes and ditches peppered on them, getting the vehicle can be challenge for the farmers. Such poor connectivity issue is one of the major reasons that agri-produces struggle to find a way to the markets. India’s road network, too, is far from adequate. According to available figures from the Statistical Year Book India 2017, out of a total highway (State and national) length of 265,100 km, 263,263 km are surfaced while out of a total of Panchayati Raj and Rural Roads of 1,831,043 km and 2,437,255 km, respectively, only 986,075 km and 1,486,069 km have been surfaced or concretised. These roads are key to ensuring that farmers growing crops in the interiors of the country can sell their produce, either through physical access to the markets or through e-NAM (electronic National Agriculture Market).
Digital literacy to leverage e-NAMs is lacking: In a country where general literacy covers a sizeable population and access to the internet has enabled an enviable smartphone penetration, digital coverage among farmers remains questionable. These people still depend on age-old practices that are often unproductive, if not counter-productive. As a result, the Government’s move to e-NAMs (National Agricultural Markets) bore limited fruit. Physical access to mandis is a task for many farmers, especially small and marginal ones. Only around 600 mandis are enrolled in the e-NAM system. There is an urgent need to improve their performance to encourage sponsors to raise their bids and compete to enroll farmers to secure input supplies. Farmers are yet to take advantage as many of them are not digitally adept.
Historically, bumper productions are good news to statisticians, who can play around with the figures to show how increase in production pushed down the wholesale price index (WPI) and consumer price index (CPI), and thereby kept the dreaded inflation under check. Meanwhile, retail customers would be flooded with choice, though we may doubt how useful that ultimately proves to be. Farmers are the last ones to reap the benefit.The time to change it is here.
(The writer is MD of an insecticides company.)
