Multifunctionality of agriculture is demonstrated by the fact that it provides food, feed, fiber, fuel and other goods. It also has a major influence on other essential ecosystem services such as water supply and carbon sequestration or release. Agriculture plays an important social role, providing employment and a way of life. Both agriculture and its products are a medium of cultural transmission and cultural practices worldwide. Agriculturally based communities provide a foundation for local economies and are an important means for countries to secure their territories.
According to broad estimates, agriculture accounts for a major part of the livelihood of 40% of the world’s population and occupies 40% of total land area; 90% of farms worldwide have a size of less than 2 hectares. Agriculture includes crop, animal, forestry- and fishery-based systems or mixed farming, including new emerging systems such as organic, precision and peri-urban agriculture. Although agricultural inputs and outputs constitute the bulk of world trade, most food is consumed domestically, i.e., where it is produced.
Over 70% of the world’s poor live in rural areas. These 2.1 billion people live on less than US$2 a day. This is not inevitable, and an improved economic environment and greater social equity at local, national, and global scales have the potential to ensure that agriculture is able to provide improved livelihoods. Inextricably linked to poverty are vulnerabilities relating to production and consumption shocks, poor sanitation, and lack of access to health care and deficient nutrient intake, placing many in agrarian societies at risk.
Agriculture in India
India, being an agrarian society, has always regarded agriculture as the back-bone of its economy. Time and again, the agriculture sector has highlighted its importance by contributing towards the overall national growth. About 65 per cent of India’s population in rural areas still relies on agriculture for employment and livelihood. Agriculture also accounts for 8.56 % of India’s exports. Presently, about 43 % of India’s total geographical area is used for agricultural activity.
Agriculture including allied activities accounted for 13.9 per cent of GDP at 2004-5 prices in 2011-12 as compared to 14.5 per cent in 2010-11. In terms of composition, out of a total share of 14.5 per cent in GDP in 2010-11, agriculture alone accounted for 12.3 per cent, followed by forestry and logging at 1.4 per cent, and fishing at 0.7 per cent. Notwithstanding the declining trend in agriculture’s share in GDP, the importance of the sector to the economy is best understood with reference to its share in employment and in terms of its criticality for macroeconomic stability. While the former was well known, the latter became manifest with rising growth in incomes since the mid-2000s.
Therefore, growth in agriculture and allied sectors remains an important objective and a ‘necessary condition’ for inclusive growth. The average annual growth in agriculture and allied sectors realized during the Eleventh Plan Period was 3.3 per cent against the targeted growth rate of 4 per cent. The sector recorded slightly lower average growth than targeted in the Eleventh Plan period due to severe drought experienced in most parts of the country during 2009-10 and drought/deficient rainfall in some states, namely Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern UP, and West Bengal in 2010-11.
However, timely and corrective measures taken by the government helped boost agricultural production and growth in the sector reached 7.0 per cent in 2010-11, the highest growth rate achieved during the last six years. In 2011-12 agriculture and allied sectors are estimated to achieve a growth rate of 2.5 per cent. However, it is a matter of concern that agricultural growth is still, to a certain extent, characterized by fluctuations due to the vagaries of nature, though there has not been actual decline in terms of output since 2002-3.
Harnessing Science & Technology
The agricultural scenario in India has undergone drastic changes and today it has become extremely scientific, sophisticated and mechanized. Increased emphasis is being given on the progress of agricultural education and research in the country. Among all the inputs that go into agricultural production, it is the knowledge inputs that have stagnated in the past decade. The technology fatigue seems to be a phenomenon evident in the second phase of the green revolution, after the mid 1980s. There is little discussion about the relationship between the slowing growth rates of fertilizer use, electricity consumption, irrigated area, and the negative trends in growth of net sown area.
There has been an increase in capital intensity of agriculture in the 1990s, “doubling the incremental capital output ratio (ICOR) from about 2 to 4”, and in the field, farmers do realize this change in the ICOR as increasing costs of production and decreasing profitability. Their response is to produce low risk, low input consuming crops. Some economists make a demand for input price supports (subsidies) to make farming a viable option for 86 percent of Indian farmers. But the relationship between these contexts of increasingly marginal and small holdings, limited access to credit and increasing input costs along with capital intensity of agriculture, and the nature and content of agricultural research demand more information about the latter.
Agricultural research is conducted by public, private and voluntary sector organizations. It is the public sector organizations – within the central and state governments that have received major policy attention and research funding in India. The Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE) was established in the Ministry of Agriculture in December 1973. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is an autonomous body under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research is an apex organization at the national level for promoting Science and Technology Programmes in the agricultural research and education. The ICAR was set up on 16 July 1929, as the Registered Society under the Societies Registration Act 1860, on the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Agriculture. It was reorganized twice, in 1965 and 1973. The research set-up of the ICAR includes 49 Institutes, 6 National Bureaux, 25 Project Directorates, 17 National Research Centres, and 78 All-India Co-ordinated Research Projects including Network Projects.
The ICAR promotes research, education and extension education in 44 State Agricultural Universities, 5 Deemed Universities, one Central Agricultural University for the North-Eastern Hills Region, and 4 Central Universities with agriculture faculty by giving financial assistance in different forms. For effective communication of research findings among farmers, the ICAR maintains an effective network of Krishi Vigyan Kendras and Trainers’ and Training Centres along with Zonal Co-ordinating Units. Unlike other research councils supported by the Government of India through its various Ministries, the ICAR has a significantly high (1:3 currently) ratio of scientific to non-scientific manpower. The ratio excludes the technical support staff needed for the scale and diversity of agricultural experiments, and counts only the administrative and support staff.
The State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) are responsible for the conduct of research, education and extension education in an integrated fashion, to meet the knowledge and technology demands of each state. Given that extension in the SAUs is geared to imparting knowledge and technology to the extension staff of the Department of Agriculture, all the SAUs produce a ‘Package of Practices’ for all important crops in the state, with recommendations of appropriate embodied and disembodied technologies.
Besides these domestic initiatives, there are several international initiatives and support for national agricultural research. The first among these is the World Bank aided National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP), which has approved and supported 187 sub-projects with a total outlay of about Rs 1,017 crore. These sub-projects have very diverse partnerships with ICAR Institutions and State Agricultural Universities, General Universities, IITs, IIMs, CSIR laboratories, other Central and State government departments, private sector organizations and NGOs.
Others include (i) the natural resources based project at the ICAR Research Complex for Eastern Region, Patna on ‘Promoting sustainable livelihood development’, (ii) the Indo-Swiss collaboration in Biotechnology Project, “Molecular characterization and genetic enhancement of fungal disease resistance and terminal heat tolerance in wheat for mitigating the effects of climate change, at the Directorate of Wheat Research, Karnal,” , and the UNESCO-MAB approved project Sustainable Management of Marginal Drylands. The overall objective of the second phase of the project (2009–13) is to focus on building the capacity of the dryland researchers to transfer their scientific findings for use both by local communities and for policy.
Besides, the Department of Biotechnology (“DBT”) of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of India is primarily responsible for identifying and supporting Research & Development programs in all biotechnology and biotechnology-related areas which include agriculture and food biotechnology, nutraceuticals and nutritional enhancement of food with a strong social extension programme. It also supports national and international training of young scientists in the field of biotechnology at various universities and institutes; etc.
Lack of Synergy
Given the vital importance of agriculture for food security, livelihood and income of vast majority of people and importance of the sector for overall growth of the economy and other services provided by the sector, it is not receiving proper attention it desreves. Being a State Subject, this sector usually gets ignored while according national priorities. This is manifest from the 2003 National Science and Technology policy of the Ministry of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences.
Even the National Water Policy 2012, released by the Union Ministry of Water Resources recently in June this year, makes no reference to agriculture sector, whereas this sector is the biggest consumer of fresh water.
The scinetific and technological research and innovations made at the ICAR and state agricultual universities reach to the well-to-do farmers which constitute a negligible minority of the farming community while leaving over 90% farmers with small land holdings at the mercy of circumstances and it is this majority which succumbs to indebtedness and accounts for the most of the farmers’ suicides.
Way Ahead
There is urgency for envisaging synergy between various ministries at the Centre viz. Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Power, Ministry of Water Resources etc. to have an Inter-Ministerial Consultative Group of Ministers to oversee the planning and implementation of their respective policies with specific emphasis on promoting sustainable agricultural development.
Some mode of synergy needs to be estabished between the Centre and state governments in this regard to promote better cooperation and facilitate better coordination as well. There is also need for evolving some mechanism to monitor periodically progress made in this regard and review of that progress should be addressed on priority basis.
What is required at this juncture is the need for effective strategy to address the problems and challenges being confronted by agriculture sector. There is also a need for policies and strategies to adjust to the new types of technologies, changing demand patterns, upcoming value chains and supermarkets, revolution in communication technology, institutional innovations and globalization and other evolving changes in the system surrounding agriculture.
No production activity can be sustained in the long run by overlooking the health of the production base and the producers. In this context it is essential that focus should be on farmers and natural resource system, comprising land, water, vegetation, which form the production base of agriculture. Often, policies are focused on farming without looking at their implications for the farmers. Unless growth and development of farming leads to improvement in welfare of farmers, it cannot be sustained.
Agriculture diversification towards high value agricultural commodities like fruit, vegetables and dairy products hold vast potential to accelerate growth and improve farm income in the country. Harnessing full benefit of diversification requires new institutional and contractual arrangements for production and marketing and ensuring that smallholders are not excluded from the process.
Growth in output and farm income depends upon a large number of factors viz. prices of output and inputs, technology and other non price factors. Raising growth requires remunerative and assured pricing environment for output, access to improved technology, application of quality inputs and machinery. Further, growth has to be achieved from a shrinking natural resource base which implies that growth comes primarily from the increase in productivity.
It was envisaged in the Eleventh Plan that in order to achieve 4 per cent growth rate in agriculture India would need to raise public investment to 4% of GDP agriculture. Public investments are falling short of this target which needs to be met at the earliest.
There are important lessons from disaggregate growth analysis. Much of what happens in agriculture depends upon the action at state level and the status of technology. Crops which experienced technological breakthroughs are showing robust growth. Thus there is a need to motivate states to take required steps to accelerate agriculture growth alongwith emphasis on technology.
Technology is the prime mover for growth. Considering the costs and constraints of resources such as water, nutrients and energy, the genetic enhancement of productivity should be coupled with input use efficiency. This can be made possible only by creation and utilization of new and improved technology.
Electric power is not only cheaper but also much more efficient for undertaking various farm operations. There is need to raise supply of power to rural areas and agriculture sector and to check erratic supply, unscheduled cut and low voltage.
Increased use of inputs like quality seed and fertilizer results in instant increase in productivity and production, and demand for such inputs is rising rapidly. Seed is the basic input to raise productivity. In most of the crops use of quality/certified seed in total seed use is awfully low. Inadequate availability at or near to villages, high prices and spurious or low quality seed are the major constraints in promoting use of seed. Weak regulation and almost complete absence of monitoring mechanism are giving way to market for spurious inputs which is damaging farmers interest to use quality inputs and ruins return to investment in such inputs.
In Central and Eastern states having a large potential, marketing infrastructure is very underdeveloped and private trade is exploitative. As such, the incentives for the adoption of new technology in such areas are very weak. In order to usher in green revolution in these states farmers need to be assured of incentive structure.
Agriculture in India is highly labour intensive activity. Availability of labour for agriculture has also been severally affected by lack of willingness of members of farm families to undertake manual work in agriculture. Policies that reduce availability of labour for agriculture and hurt production prospects need to be reoriented.
By Dr. Arvind Kumar, President, India Water Foundation
