<div><em>The crop estimates show that barring sugarcane everything else recorded a decline in production in 2014-15 as compared to 2013-14. <strong>Sandeep Bamzai</strong> analyses India's long brewing agrarian crisis</em><br><br><br>As expected, India's farm output is down. A double whammy of a deficit monsoon last year which impacted the 2014 Kharif crop and unseasonal rains and hailstorms in February-March this year which damaged the standing Rabi crops in as many as 14 states means that we will be short by 12.36 million tonnes in 2014-15 crop year (July-June) as compared to the previous year when India reported its highest ever food-grain production of 265.04 million tonnes.</div><div> </div><div>The crop estimates show that barring sugarcane everything else recorded a decline in production in 2014-15 as compared to 2013-14. Last year India recorded a 12 per cent deficit of Monsoon rainfall, making the year 2014 technically a drought year. This year too, it appears that India will have a deficit of 10 per cent or more during the Monsoon season (June-September). Which translates into two successive years of what is technically a drought amd this is obviously a travesty in a nation already grappling with malnutrition and poverty.</div><div> </div><div><table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width: 200px"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/Sandeep-Bamzai1.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 287px; margin: 1px; float: right;"></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Sandeep Bamzai</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>Growth rate of land under sowing is abysmal which in any case may cause lower production. Indian agriculture’s fundamentals haven’t changed one bit in almost 40 years. While crop switching has resulted in the prevalence of more cash crops being sown, the total net sown area hasn’t grown at all. Proportionately, mouths to feed has gone up manifold. And therein lies the rub for India.</div><div> </div><div>Net sown area in 1970 was 140 million hectares which has gone up to 142 million hectares in 2009. Meanwhile, the population has doubled during the same period, from 54.82 crore in 1970 to 116 crore in 2009. Even if one goes back in time, the compounded annual growth rate since 1950 in terms of net sown area (119 million hectares) is a meagre 0.35 per cent while since 2000 it is a paltry 0.08 per cent.</div><div> </div><div>When we talk of structural reform in the Indian economy, we don’t pay adequate heed to the daily mass migration of unskilled labour from rural Bharat to creaking under the strain urban agglomerates in India. Perhaps that is why there is no accretion in net sown area over a 40 year period and the contribution of agriculture as a percentage to GDP has dwindled rapidly. The depletion is worrisome because we have not built on our competencies. Imagine agriculture’s contribution was 49 per cent to the GDP basket in 1950, had taken a hair cut by 1970 to 41 per cent and is now closer to 15 per cent. Now, all these people are migrating to the cities and towns putting pressure on the civic infrastructure. Worse still, they are unskilled or low skilled and they don’t add any value to the economy after migration.This is the scariest part for if India wants to become a manufacturing hub to the rest of the world, then it needs to scale up its manufacturing output and give genuine employment opportunities to the nearly 12 million people who are coming off the education assembly line every year.</div><div> </div><div>As per 4th Advance Estimates for 2014-15, total production of rice is estimated at 104.80 MT which is lower by 1.85 MT than the last year's record production of 106.65 MT. Production of wheat, estimated at 88.94 MT, is lower by 6.91 MT than the record production of 95.85 million tonnes achieved during 2013-14. Total production of Coarse Cereals, estimated at 41.75 million tonnes, is also lower by 1.54 million tonnes than their production during 2013-14. Similarly, production of pulses estimated at 17.20 MT is lower by 2.05 MT than their production during the last year (2013-14). With a decrease of 6.07 million tonnes over the last year, total production of oilseeds in the country is estimated at 26.68 MT. Production of sugarcane, estimated at 359.33 MT, is however higher by 7.19 MT as compared to last year. Total production of cotton estimated at 35.48 million bales (of 170 kg each) is marginally lower than last year but higher by 3.01 million bales than the average production of last five years.</div><div> </div><div>India's long brewing agrarian crisis and resultant mass migration is a conundrum that cannot be resolved overnight with slogans, dovetailing human resources involved in say a MGNREGA towards building capital assets of some kind was one option. So, use the welfare economics model of giving dole but combine it with the MGNREGA budget and divert it into building roads and highways. Optimally utilise the resources at your disposal in the interim before manufacturing hubs can be architected. In any case building roads and highways will only help improve connectivity and work towards the betterment of Bharat and movement of farm of agriculture items.<br><br> The only option is yield improvement to feed the growing population. But as we have not bothered to deal with supply side interventions, this too hasn’t materialised. Indian policy mavens are still to realise the enormity of the agrarian crisis coupled with the mass migration. With the second green revolution not having worked out, interestingly, states like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and even West Bengal have stepped up to the plate in terms of revolutionising agriculture in their respective areas, but India needs to collectively focus on Bharat and its kisan. MP is now the new wheat bowl producing premium 'sharbati atta' with the finest attributes in taste and quality.<br> </div><div>ICAR says that studies indicate a probability of 10-40 per cent loss in crop production in India and other countries of South Asia with increases in temperature by 2080-2100 and decrease in irrigation water. India could lose four to five million tonnes wheat production with every rise of 10 C temperature throughout the growing period even after considering carbon fertilization. So, even as we pitch India to transform itself as a global manufacturing hub, let us not ignore the humble farmer who ensures that food is put on our table.</div>
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