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| Operation Greens for Doubling the Farmers Income | | | Dr. Banarsi Lal and Dr. Pawan Sharma
Agriculture remains the largest sector of the Indian economy. This sector plays the vital role for social security in terms of food and nutrition and the employment that it provides to the large population of India. Agriculture still employs the largest work force although the earnings are much lower than the workers employed in other economic sectors such as industries and services. This sector is confronted with productivity shocks and price volatility. The climate change induced weather aberrations are on the rise. India is a leading producer of cereals, pulses, spices and spice products. India also ranks in top three in production of paddy, wheat, pulses, groundnut, rapeseed, tea and tobacco. Although the Indian agriculture got hold of all these accolades since past few decades but still the economic condition of the Indian farmers is miserable. There are many problems haunting in agriculture such as lack of irrigation facilities, lack of agricultural marketing facilities, lack of information on soil health, lack of farm mechanisation, lack of storage facilities, small size of land holding, illiteracy among the farmers, scarcity of capital, high cost of agricultural inputs etc.
Agriculture in India depends mostly on the tropical monsoon which is uncertain. Lack of monsoon sometimes leads to crop failure. Over irrigation in some areas leads to waterlogging, soil alkalinity and soil salinity. Agricultural marketing is still the biggest challenge for our farmers. Lack of marketing facilities compels our farmers to depend on middlemen for sale of their agricultural produce. Middlemen purchase farmers agricultural produce at a low price by denying the full price. Farmers are unable to decide the amount of fertilizers and manures use in their fields due to lack of knowledge on soil health. A good knowledge on soil health and its management practices can greatly reduce the cost of agricultural production. Farm mechanization can make agricultural operations efficient and thus can facilitate in scientific farming. Lack of appropriate transportation and storage facilities compels our farmers to sell their farm produce at throw away prices.69 per cent of the Indian farmers are marginal farmers having less than one hectare of land. This makes agriculture economically unviable. Many farmers are unaware of many government schemes and programmes. Even if they come to know they are unable to understand the details and technicalities of thse schemes and programmes.
Like any other business, agriculture also requires a capital investment. In modern agriculture, capital input is becoming more and more important. In order to purchase the modern agricultural equipments, Government is providing the subsidies to the farmers but initially the farmers need to pay the entire amount. The subsidy amount is credited to the farmers account later on. Thus, most of the farmers who do not have the initial amount are unable to avail many of such subsidies. The high quality seeds used in the modern agriculture are very costly. It becomes very difficult for the small and marginal farmers to purchase such high quality seeds.
Farmers should be motivated to learn about the new agricultural technologies and zeal should be created among them specially on commercial agriculture.The training programmes on high tech agriculture should be made compulsory for the farmers.There is need to revive many agricultural programmes by taking the advice of experts and progresive farmers.The problem of fragmented land can be overcome by bringing in lagislation for consolidation of holding.Consolidation of holding has been implemented in some states but it must be implemented in all the states where the size of land holding is less than one hectare. In order to overcome the problem of capital sacrcity farmers can avail loan by using the Kisan Credit Scheme.They can also insure his crop under crop insurance scheme.Farmers can also get the agricultural information through DD National,DD-Kisan,Kisan Call Centres,State Agricultural Universities(SAUs),Krishi Vigyan Kendras(KVKs) etc.In order to tackle the problem of transportation and sale of farm produce, government has launched the scheme of Price Support Scheme(PSS).The objective of this scheme is to provide the remunerative prices to the farmers for their produce of pulses, oilseeds and cotton in case their price fall below the Minimum Support Price(MSP).In order to provide the best price of agriculture produce the government has set up several agricultural producer markets.We observe the farmers suicides and farmers protests from different parts of the nation. There is dire need to accelerate the agricultural growth rate across the nation so that a security and stability can be developed in the agricultural sector.The main aim of Operation Green to enhance the income of the farmers.The government has set a target to double the farmers income by 2022.This announcement has brought a new hope for the farmers of India.There is nothing new in the Operation Green.There is need of strong political will and missionary zeal to achieve the target of doubling the farmers income.
Operation Flood(OF) was launched by the government of India in 1970 for increasing the milk production.In a span of 48 years India has been transformed from milk importer to world's number one producer. Government took multiple steps to make Operation Flood succesful.Now government is also working on several steps to make Operation Green successful.Operation Flood was successful because of formation of National Milk Grid(NMG) that linked milk producers to the urban consumers.The grid was formed by the cooperatives of milk producers by eliminating the middlemen.Elimination of middlemen ensured better remunerative prices to the producers and also narrowed the demand-supply gap.In Oeration Green(OG) government wants to implement the same idea by connecting different mandies under Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees(APMCs) digitally and develop them as e-NAM(electronic National Agriculture Market).The e-NAM will provide a digital platform for marketing of agriculture produce.This scheme was launched in 2016 by the government of India and now it is connected to 585 mandis under APMC.Operation Green aims to increase the use of new agricultural technologies,better control of plant diseases and developing of high yielding varieties of different crops.Government is making strenous efforts to create awareness on modern agricultural technologies among the farmers and to empower them.India's production is a lesser problem as compared to the problems such as marketing,storage and transportation.India is a leading producer of many agricultural products but due to the lack of storage,marketing and transportation facilities farmers do not get the full price of their farm produce.There is dire need to revamp all these facilities.There is need to develop agricultural infrastructure in the rural areas.Intially the government has taken three vegetables on TOP periorities under the mission i.e.Tomato,Onion and Potato. In the beginning government wants to control the prices of these crops.Many times farmers throw these vegetables on road due to the boom and burst of their prices.Sometimes sudden rise of prices of these commodities put a common man in great problem.There is urgent need to connect the consumption centres to the production centres. |
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