Agriculture – Empowering the Indian Farmers

BIM Trichy - Team Anthaprerna

An Introspection by

Karthick L

Piyushree N

Sivarajkumar N Y

1 BIM Trichy - Team Anthaprerna

Executive Summary

In this information era, we find the glamorous service

industry to rule the economy of India, which contributes

to 60% of GDP. If we ask a youngster to join the

agricultural industry the immediate response would be

“Are you crazy?” and a grinning smile. Yes, Indian

agriculture and farming is in a bad shape and future

generation doesn’t give importance to this industry as

they do for a service sector because agriculture isn’t a

lustrous job and doesn’t reap rewards. How do we go

about changing this? How does technology enabled

smart eco system going to lead the way to future of

agriculture? How do we improve the utilization of the

produced food from food to fork?

India is rich in agro ecological diversities such as

rainfall, soil and temperature gives it a larger scope of

nesting various types of crops. The sun favors the land

throughout the year in most of the region along with 3

trillion cubic meters of water, 14 major, 44 medium and

55 minor rivers share about some 85% of the drainage

basin. About 214 billion cubic meters of water is

available as underground water. India’s total

geographical area accounts to 328.73 million hectares

of which only 306.4 million hectares are reported area

of land under use. The net area that is cultivated

comprises about (46.6%) 142.6 million hectares,

Forest accounts to (22.5%) 68.97 million hectares,

13.9 million hectares comes under cultivable

wasteland and 9.91 million hectares under fallow

lands. Only 30% of these area are irrigated and rest of

the area are rain fed.

India is the highest contributor to Agriculture as a % of

GDP (14.1%) but only $255 billion as of FY 2012. The

significance of Agricultural sector does not limits itself

to the contribution for GDP but has an impact on

poverty alleviation and rural development. More than

58% of the population’s employment is dependent on

agriculture as on date. But inefficient methods of

farming, fragmented land, poor funding, unavailability

of R&D facility, monetary motivation and information

reach has made this sector lackluster. Identifying and

targeting these problem helps us in the future growth

of this sector.

Most important area that is to be targeted is the

agriculture technology. The statistics say that India

ranks in top 3 on the list of producing cereals like

paddy, wheat, maize and pulses; but in the table of

productivity it is rated at 36th position. India produces

10% of the fruits and vegetable the world produces but

it isn’t in the list of top productive countries. Major

reason behind this is India’s traditional farming and

storing food.

Farmers used animals for the farming and used old

barns for storing crops. Mechanization hasn’t been

implemented in India in full phase.

An average of 1.66kW/ha is being used which is the

reason behind it. Effectively storing the food involves

lots of cold storage devices and other technologies to

reduce wastage and improve productivity. India has a

long way to move towards modern technology.

Benefits are improving utilization of food from producer

to consumer, reducing food insecurity, promoting more

rural employment, going low on labor input cost and

price of the food. A right technology mix can increase

above benefits to its optimum level. Although lots can

be argued over words, there are lot of hindrance for the

same mentioned opportunities. The hurdles rise up as

tradeoff between technology and environment, manual

labor and cultural ethics etc. There is also another face

of this scenario that technology bring about is greed,

wherein companies in private sector deny to lower

prices stating the technology used in the process.

Companies make profit but status of the country to

bring down food insecurity becomes a marshalling

point.

As a coin always has both sides so does this. The

challenges facing in the above mentioned process will

involve the following

Ravaging out and bringing in synergy between

new and old technology into the agricultural arena

so that focus is more about bringing in effective

ways and means to improve and empower the

farmers at optimum cost.

Identifying an effective investment portfolio for

bringing about the technologies available in the

hands of the farmer

Strategizing an efficient supply chain wherein

there is an higher utilization of food in the hands of

consumers

Bringing clear policy goals that will give an

effective bond between technology, price, labor

and development in farming

Developing higher incentives for the risk the

farmer takes and as well as to add more

entrepreneurs in farming and agriculture

2 BIM Trichy - Team Anthaprerna

Year Area in hectares

1970 2.28

1976 2.00

1980 1.84

1985 1.69

1990 1.55

1996 1.41

2000 1.33

2006 1.23

2010 1.14

Table 1: Average size of land holdings

source :Department of agriculture and cooperation

Total Geographic Area 328.73

Land Fit for use 284.73

Net land cultivable 195.10

Land under Multiple cultivation 74.17

Forest 69.64

Cultivable waste land 26.48

Fallow lands 24.82

Land not cultivable 89.63

Land not fit for use 44.00

Table 2: Geographical area distribution in India source :Agriculture census, Ministry of Agriculture

Crop Cumulative Wastage (percent)

Cereals 3.9-6

Pulses 4.3-6.1

Oil Seeds 6

Fruits & Vegetables 5.8-18

Milk 0.8

Fisheries 2.9

Meat 2.3

Poultry 3.7

Table 3: Wastage in the Various Crops sources : CIPHET, Ludhiana

Sources 2000-2001 2010-2011

Cooperative banks 39.20 15.70

RRB 8.00 9.80

Commercial banks 52.60 74.40

Other agencies 0.20 0.10

Table 4: Sources of Institutional Agricultural Credit Percentage

source :Department of agriculture and cooperation

Institution Capacity (in MT)

FCI 32.05

CWC 10.07

SWCs 21.29

State Civil Supplies Department 11.3

Total Public Sector 74.71

Cooperative Sector 15.07

Private Sector 18.97

Total 108.75

Table 5: Agriculture Warehousing Capacity in the Country Source: Report of Sub-Group on Warehousing and Bulk Handling

Year Agricultural workers

Draught animals

Tractors Power tillers

1971-72 10.64 52.86 8.45 0.11

1981-82 9.2 33.55 18.46 0.11

1991-92 7.22 20.5 26.14 0.16

2001-02 5.7 11.76 36.77 0.36

2005-06 5.39 9.97 38.45 0.44

2009-10 5.12 8.55 41.67 0.52

Table 6: Percentage share of different farm power sources in Indian agriculture

source :Department of agriculture and cooperation