Context:
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In 2016, the Government has set a target of doubling farmers’ income by the year 2022.
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Doubling farmer’s income till 2022-23 over the base year of 2015-16, requires annual growth of 10.41 percent in farmers’ income.
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However, there is no roadmap or action plan to achieve this over-ambitious goal.
Facts:
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An RBI study shows that a potato farmer only gets 28 per cent of the amount paid by the consumer.
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Across all crops, the farmgate price (the net price of the product when it leaves the farm) is 40-60 per cent less than the consumer price.
What are the constraints in the path of doubling the income of farmers?
The target of doubling farmer’s income by 2022 seems too ambitious due to the following issues-
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Data related challenges. There is no official data on farmers’ incomes after 2015-16. There is no report card of the current income levels of the farmers and no plan to achieve this target.
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No Plan: ICAR prepared a plan for each state for doubling farmer’s income. But no details were available on how states are going to implement the plan or how the government will analyze the progress.
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Reduce Budget Allocation: Many important schemes, such as crop insurance, interest subvention subsidy, and even PM-KISAN are facing stagnation or decline in allocation under budget 2021. Even Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana received a lower allocation than last year.
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Uneven Procurement: The procurement of wheat and paddy has gone up. But, it is only benefitting few states like Punjab, Haryana, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, and Chhattisgarh.
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Uneven Credit: The agriculture credit portfolio is not equally distributed across the states and across farmers within the state.
Way forward
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The problem with respect to Agriculture in India is deep-rooted. It requires systemic solutions with a well-thought-out strategy and policy reforms.
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ICAR should develop models of farming system by combining all their technologies in a package with focus on farm income.
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Increase in crop intensity and diversification towards high value crops is also the key.