AIR Spotlight: Government Schemes and Initiatives For Doubling Farmers Income

AIR Spotlight is an insightful program featured daily on the All India Radio News on air. In this program, many eminent panellists discuss issues of importance which can be quite helpful in IAS exam preparation.

This article is about the discussion on: Government Schemes and Initiatives For Doubling Farmers Income.

Participants:

1. Dr. Nilay Ranjan, Agriculture Expert
2. Rajesh Lake,AIR Correspondent

Context: This article discusses various government’s policies for doubling farmers income.

Introduction:

• Agriculture supports the sustenance of more than half of India’s total population. Doubling farmers’ incomes in a short period is an overwhelming task for decision-makers, scientists, and political makers due to their continuous role in employment, income, and, above all, in national food safety. 
• Doubling the farmers’ income is possible through the increase in total production and the best realisation of market prices, reducing production costs, product diversification, post-harvest efficient management, etc
• The budgetary allocation in the Union Budget 2023-24 for the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare is about Rs 1.25 lakh crore.

Need for Doubling Farmers’ Income:

• Around 85% of the farmers in India are small, marginal, and landless whose annual incomes are relatively very less.
• Due to agricultural losses, and low farm incomes, the number of suicides by farmers in India has also increased sharply.
• India’s previous agricultural sector development strategy mainly focused on increasing agricultural production and improving food security.  
• To promote farmers’ welfare, ease agricultural difficulties, and achieve equality between farmers’ income and non-agricultural income, farmers’ income must be doubled.

How can doubling farmers’ income be done?

• An Inter-Ministerial Committee recommended strategies to achieve the goal of doubling farmers’ income through various policies, reforms & programmes.The Committee identified following seven sources of income growth:-

1. Increase in crop productivity
2. Increase in livestock productivity
3. Resource use efficiency – reduction in cost of production
4. Increase in cropping intensity
5. Diversification to high value agriculture
6. Remunerative prices on farmers’ produce
7. Shift of surplus manpower from farm to non-farm occupations

The premise of the strategy for doubling farmers income is based on the following primary principles:

1. Increasing total output across the agricultural sub-sectors through realising higher productivity
2. Rationalising/reducing the cost of production
3. Ensuring remunerative prices in the agricultural produce
4. Effective risk management
5. Adoption of sustainable technologies

Initiatives towards doubling farmers income: 

• The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana is also known as the PM KISAN program. This is the first basic universal income program targeting many small and marginal farmers. It is a scheme with 100% funding from the Central Government of India and is being implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare. 
• To raise output and reduce cost: Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana, Soil health card, and Prampragat Krishi Vikas Yojana.
• Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana provides insurance against crop and income loss and encourages investment in farming.
• Operation Greens addresses price volatility of perishable commodities like Tomato, Onion and Potato (TOP).
• PM Kisan Sampada Yojana promotes food processing in a holistic manner.
• e – National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) – a pan-India electronic trading portal that nets the prevailing Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC) Mandis for making a united national market for agricultural commodities.
• Minimum Support Prices to insure the farmers against a steep decline in the prices of their goods and to help them prevent losses.
  • Government has increased the MSP for all mandated Kharif, Rabi and other commercial crops with a return of at least 50 per cent over all India weighted average cost of production from 2018-19. 
• ‘Farmer Producer Organizations, (FPO)’ involves collecting producers, especially small and marginal farmers to form an effective alliance to collectively address many challenges of agriculture, such as better access to investments, technology, inputs, and markets. FPO ‘Farmer Producer Organization’ is a type of PO (Producer Organizations) where members are farmers. 
• Institutional credit for agriculture sector

1. Increased from Rs. 8.5 lakh crore in 2015-16 with a target to reach Rs. 18.5 lakh crore in 2023-24. 
2. Benefit of concessional institutional credit through KCC at 4% interest per annum has also now been extended to Animal Husbandry and Fisheries farmers for meeting their short-term working capital needs.
3. A special drive has been undertaken since February 2020 to provide concessional institutional credit with focus on covering all PM-KISAN beneficiaries through Kisan Credit Cards (KCC). 

• Promotion of organic farming in the country

1. Paramparagat Krishi VikasYojana (PKVY) was initiated in 2015-16 to promote organic farming in the country. 
2. Government also proposes to promote sustainable natural farming systems through the scheme Bhartiya Prakratik Krishi Padhati (BPKP). The proposed scheme aims at cutting down cost of cultivation, enhancing farmer’s income and ensuring resource conservation and safe and healthy soils, environment and food.
3. Mission Organic Value Chain Development in the NorthEast Region (MOVCDNER) has been launched. 

• Per Drop More Crop: This scheme was launched in the year 2015-16 to increase water use efficiency, reducing cost of inputs and increasing productivity at the farm level through Micro Irrigation technologies i.e. drip and sprinkler irrigation systems.
• Agri Infrastructure Fund (AIF): Since inception of AIF in the year 2020, the scheme has sanctioned an amount of Rs.13681 crore worth agriculture infrastructure in the country for more than 18133 projects. With the support of the scheme, various agriculture infrastructures were created and some of the infrastructure are at the final stage of completion. 
• Creation of a various Start-up Ecosystem in agriculture and allied sector.

Way Forward:

• Farmers’ low incomes and annual fluctuations are the main causes of agricultural difficulties. 
• To secure the future of agriculture and improve the livelihoods of half of the Indian population, full attention must be paid to improving the welfare of farmers and increasing agricultural incomes. 
• States and Union Territories need to be mobilised to achieve the goal of doubling farmers’ incomes and to pay active attention to farmers’ capacity building (technology adoption and awareness), which becomes a catalyst for increasing farmers’ incomes. 
• As India is a diversified country and most of its agriculture depends on the monsoons, it must intervene based on the comparative advantages of each region and its different agro-climatic characteristics, including research, technology expansion, and post-harvest management, processing, and marketing.

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