The Crisis Farmers Face Today Will Have Repercussions

Context: The pandemics’ economic effect is amplified by pre-existing levels of disadvantage and social exclusion that have resulted into a humanitarian crisis.

Pandemic Induced Economic and Humanitarian Crisis

• Fall in prices of commodities: as a result of transportation and market disruptions.
• Demand and supply mismatch
• Lack of warehousing facility: for storing harvested crops and wait for prices to pick up.
• Inability to pay warehouse rent. 
• livestock farmers, small businesses, weavers, and other artisans are under stress.
• Inaccessible bank credits.
• Unemployed daily-wage labourers with Trans-genders, rag-pickers, and sex-workers having zero income. 
• Low predicted growth in the rural farm sector in 2020-21, with uncertainty over normal monsoon.

The cascading effect of the present crisis

• The economy is starved of working capital: resources for investment and other inputs needed for the next agrarian cycle is insufficient.
• Carry forward Debt: looming debt trap, because of the last cycle’s loans.