Doubling Of Farm Income A Bridge
Context: The project to double farmers’ income performance is nowhere close to the 35% rise in real income projected by the government’s panel for this period.
Issues in state of farm income: Insights from 77th Round of the National Sample Survey (NSS) on ‘Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India, 2019’
- Increase in the amount of loan: Loan burden for an average farming family seen a jump from Rs.47,000 to over Rs 74,000.
- Worrisome trend: The ‘better off’ the state or the farmer, the higher the pending loan.
- Meagre growth in farmer’s income: Since 2013, average farm family income has gone up from Rs.6,442 to Rs.10,218.
- Rural divide: These figures are less than what a domestic worker would earn in big cities.
- Inequality in farm income distribution:
- Big farmers with more than 10 acres of land earn nearly Rs.30,000 a month (not more than a Class-IV employee of the government).
- The average family income of a median farmer who cultivates between 1 and 2.5 acres is much lower at Rs 8,571 per month.
- Farm contribution to farmer family income is still lower:
- ‘Agricultural household’ in the survey covers any rural family that earns some minimal amount from cultivation of crops or from animal husbandry. But not everyone in farming family is a farmer.
- Average family makes just Rs 3,798 from growing crops of various kinds, Rs 1,582 from rearing animals, Rs 641 from business and Rs 4,063 from wages and salaries.
- Farm profits calculations are over-valued: As the family’s own labour and other inputs are not counted towards the cost.
- Also, the survey does not take into account the effects of inflation.
