Context: Changing the status quo should not merely disrupt but guide farmers to the future.
Policy Targets for Inclusive Future in Indian Farming:
Reduce wastage due to supply-demand mismatch: India struggles to collect only 17% of GDP as taxes, half the average for the rich country and therefore.
When we produce and stock, at public expense, more wheat and rice and sugar than what we need either to consume or as insurance against hard times, we waste resources.
Beneficiaries should not be blamed but the policy: While the policy seems to benefit a small section of farmers in northwest India, they helped end abject dependence on food imports and were trained to abandon traditional farming, launching Green Revolution.
Change in crop mix: The same policy instruments deployed to embrace high-yield crop must be brought to enable the switching of crops without causing largescale economic and social disruption.
For training farmers in new kinds of crop farming, universities and agro-service companies should supply high-yield seeds and saplings of varieties India is short of.
MSP is red-herring: Open-ended procurement at MSP matters, not just MSP, to help the farmers benefit from subsidy and prevent their exploitation such as smuggling of rice from Bihar to Punjab.
Crop diversification through Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs): While it is difficult for the government to promise indefinite, open-ended procurement it must promote FPOs.
E.g. Amul and New Zealand’s Fonterra model cooperatives, free from the clutches of political agenda.
Market share of cooperatives in agriculture is 83% in the Netherlands, 79% in Finland, 55% in Italy and 50% in France. In the US, around 2.8 million people are organized into over 3000 cooperatives.
Climate-controlled storage: Fixing the power sector shall make available stable power in rural areas round the clock to run food processing plants.
Conclusion: Sustained dynamism of the economy will draw people into industry and services in towns, and rural populations will dwindle. Farming will become more mechanized, organized and efficient.
The new farm laws will fit this world, but do not lead to it, which calls for more work.