Seventy per cent of rural households in India depend on agriculture as their principal means of livelihood. Jay Singh, MD, CLAAS Agricultural Machinery Pvt Ltd, wonders how unique this budget would be as compared to the previous one, owing to the developments in 2016, especially the latter half.
"A collective effort by the industry players and the government is required to have a quick and long lasting impact in the agriculture sector", Singh said.
"The government must be complimented for its high focus on driving equipment rental route to expedite mechanization in farming. The concept is called Custom Hiring Center (CHC) and government provides subsidy upto 40-50% on equipment purchase. However, the concept is not universally applied across all states. A centrally sponsored and governed scheme will bring a lot of confidence in the investors and encourage participation", he said.
Energising cultivation of maize is also another agenda that Jay calls for. It is less water intensive, more stable in growth phase and has wider opportunities for sale to applications in poultry, cattle fodder, industrial usage and human consumption.
"A centrally sponsored subsidy on cost of acquisition of corn harvesters, corn pickers, forage harvesters will motivate custom hiring centers to acquire these machines for the benefit of small and marginal farmers," he said.
However, certain types of forage machines like harvester and corn pickers are not produced in the country and have to be imported. They are useful to support large scale farming of maize for making silage for cattle feed that plays a major role in increasing nutritional value in cattle feed.
"Machines like forage harvesters should be allowed to be imported duty free so that return of investment by importer-user will be sooner. Also, for such machines, homologation process of their country of origin (if from developed countries) should be recognized while certifying emission and road worthiness in India," Singh said.
Seeing the recent pollution problem across the country, Jay says how the promotion of use of biomass and bio fuel will allow for efficient use of left-over straw.
"Solutions for straw management, namely straw balers, liners (rakes), straw chopper attachments, are currently available but not widely used due to cost reasons. Fifty per cent subsidy from the government can reduce the cost of acquisition drastically, including support to R&D".
As a matter of diplomacy and creating consumption opportunity overseas, Indian government should extend soft line of credit / trade incentives and even bundle competence building on agricultural equipment, implements, parts exported from India to certain countries that have crop and farmland patterns similar to India.
Primary list of such countries according to Jay includes Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Armenia, Tajikistan, Iran.
Half of Indian farmers are dependent on rain even today, to support farming and the past decade has seen lack of uniformity of monsoon rains in the country; while some states had an abundance of water, others face drought.
"To overcome this uncertainty and ensure that all regions are uniformly benefited, the Government should push for linking of rivers as it has done for electric power. Thus, funds to undertake the project must be allocated as this would prove to be extremely beneficial for farmers suffering because of lack of rainfall", says Singh.
BW Reporters
Naina Sood is a Economics graduate and has done her post graduation in International economics and Trade. She has deep interests in Indian economy and reforms
