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Subject: Agriculture

  • [pib] India’s Agriculture trade grows during 2020-21

    Consistent trade surplus in agricultural products

    • India has consistently maintained trade surplus in the agricultural products over the years.
    • The export of Agri and allied commodities during Apr, 2020 – Feb,2021 were Rs. 2.74 lakh Crore as compared to Rs. 2.31 Crore in the same period last year indicating an increase of 18.49%.
    • The imports of Agri and allied commodities during April, 2020 – Feb, 2021 were Rs. 1.41lakh Crore as compared to Rs. 1.37 lakh Crore in the same period last year witnessing a slight increase of 2.93%.

    Commodities that posted positive growth

    • India has witnessed tremendous growth of 727 % for Wheat export.
    • On specific demand from countries, NAFED has exported 50,000 MT wheat to Afghanistan and 40,000 MT wheat to Lebanon under G2G arrangement.
    • Country has witnessed significant growth of 132% in export of (Non-Basmati) Rice.
    • Export of Non-Basmati Rice has gone up from Rs 13,030 crores in 2019-20 to Rs 30,277 crores in 2020-21.
    • This increase in exports is on account of multiple factors, mainly being India capturing new markets namely, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico.
    • Exports were also made to Togo, Senegal, Malaysia, Madagascar, Iraq, Bangladesh, Mozambique, Vietnam, Tanzania Rep and Madagascar.
    • India also enhanced export of Soya meals by 132%. Soya meal has gone up from Rs 3087 crores in 2019-20 to Rs 7224 crores in 2020-21.

  • Agriculture policy should target India’s actual farming population

    The article highlights the ambiguity about the number of farmers in India and related issues.

    How many farmers does India really have

    • The Agriculture Ministry’s last Input Survey for 2016-17 pegged the total operational holdings at 146.19 million.
    • The NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey of the same year estimated the country’s “agricultural households” at 100.7 million.
    • The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) has around 111.5 million enrolled beneficiaries.
    • Agricultural households, as per NABARD’s definition, cover any household whose value of produce from farming activities is more than Rs 5,000 during a year.
    • That obviously is too little to qualify as living income.

    Who is real farmer

    • Agricultural households, as per NABARD’s definition, cover any household whose value of produce from farming activities is more than Rs 5,000 during a year.
    • That obviously is too little to qualify as living income.
    • A “real” farmer is someone who would derive a significant part of his/her income from agriculture.
    • This, one can reasonably assume, requires growing at least two crops in a year.
    • The 2016-17 Input Survey report shows that out of the total 157.21 million hectares (mh) of farmland with 146.19 million holdings, only 140 mh was cultivated.
    • And even out of this net sown area, a mere 50.48 mh was cropped two times or more, which includes 40.76 mh of irrigated and 9.72 mh of un-irrigated land.
    • Taking the average holding size of 1.08 hectares for 2016-17, the number of “serious full-time farmers” cultivating a minimum of two crops a year  would be hardly 47 million.
    • The above figure is also consistent with other data from the Input Survey.
    • These pertain to the number of cultivators planting certified/high yielding seeds (59.01 million), using own or hired tractors (72.29 million) and electric/diesel engine pumpsets (45.96 million), and availing institutional credit (57.08 million).
    • Whichever metric one considers, the farmer population significantly engaged and dependent on agriculture as a primary source of income is well within 50-75 million.
    • The current agriculture crisis is largely about these 50-75 million farm households.

    Lack of price parity

    • At the heart of farmers’ crisis is the absence of price parity.
    • In 1970-71, when the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat was Rs 76 per quintal, 10 grams of 24-carat gold cost about Rs 185.
    •  Today, the wheat MSP is at Rs 1,975/quintal, gold prices are Rs 45,000/10g.
    • The absence of farm price parity didn’t hurt much initially when crop productivity was rising.
    • Since the 1990s, yields have further gone up to 5.1-5.2 tonnes/hectare in wheat and 6.4-6.5 tonnes for paddy. But so have production costs. 
    • The demand for making MSP a legal right is basically a demand for price parity that gives agricultural commodities sufficient purchasing power with respect to things bought by farmers.

    Way forward

    • Most government welfare schemes are aimed at poverty alleviation and uplifting those at the bottom of the pyramid.
    • But there’s no policy for those in the “middle” and in danger of slipping to the bottom.
    •  When crop prices fail to keep pace with escalating costs — of not only inputs, but everything the farmer buys — the impact is on the 50-75 million surplus producers.
    • Any “agriculture policy” has to first and foremost address the problem of price parity.
    • Farmers’ interest be even better served by the government guaranteeing a minimum “income” rather than “price” support.
    • Subsistence or part-time agriculturalists, on the other hand, would benefit more from welfare schemes and other interventions to boost non-farm employment.

    Conclusion

    Whether it is crop, livestock or poultry, agriculture policy has to focus on “serious full-time farmers”, most of them neither rich nor poor. This rural middle class that was once very confident of its future in agriculture today risks going out of business. That shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

  • [pib] E-SANTA: Electronic marketplace to connect Aqua farmers and buyers

    Union Commerce and Industry Ministry has inaugurated E-SANTA, an electronic marketplace providing a platform to connect aqua farmers and buyers.

    Note:

    Aquaculture also known as aquafarming is the farming of fish, crustaceans, mollusks, aquatic plants, algae, and other organisms. It involves cultivating freshwater and saltwater populations under controlled conditions, and can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is the harvesting of wild fish.

    Mariculture commonly known as marine farming refers to aquaculture practiced in marine environments and in underwater habitats, opposed to in freshwater.

    E-SANTA

    • The term e-SANTA was coined for the web portal, meaning Electronic Solution for Augmenting NaCSA farmers’ Trade-in Aquaculture.
    • It will enable the farmers to get a better price and the exporters to directly purchase quality products from the farmers enhancing traceability, a key factor in international trade.
    • National Centre for Sustainable Aquaculture (NaCSA) is an extension arm of Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), Ministry of Commerce & Industry.
    • It will raise income, lifestyle, self-reliance, quality levels, traceability, and provide new options for our aqua farmers.
    • The platform will change the traditional way of carrying out business from a word of mouth basis to become more formalized & legally binding.

    E-SANTA will RAISE the lives & income of farmers by:

    1. Reducing Risk
    2. Awareness of Products & Markets
    3. Increase in Income
    4. Shielding Against Wrong Practice
    5. Ease of Processes

    Its’ utility

    • E-SANTA is a Digital Bridge to end the market divide and will act as an alternative marketing tool between farmers & buyers by eliminating middlemen.
    • It will revolutionize traditional aqua farming by providing cashless, contactless and paperless electronic trade platform between farmers and exporters.
    • It can become a tool to advertise collectively the kind of products the buyers, fishermen & fish producing organisations are harvesting.

    How does it work?

    • E-SANTA is a completely paperless and end-to-end electronic trade platform between Farmers and exporters.
    • The farmers have the freedom to list their products and quote their price while the exporters have the freedom to list their requirements and also to choose the products based on their requirements.
    • This enables the farmers and buyers to have greater control over the trade and enables them to make informed decisions.
    • The platform provides a detailed specification of each product listing and it is backed by an end to end electronic payment system with NaCSA as an Escrow agent.
    • After crop listing and online negotiation, a deal is struck, advance payment is made and an estimated invoice is generated.

  • Shaphari Scheme

    Commerce Ministry wants to build confidence in quality, antibiotic-free shrimp products from India for the global market.

    Shaphari Scheme

    • The Marine Products Exports Development Authority (MPEDA) has developed a certification scheme for aquaculture products called ‘Shaphari’, a Sanksrit word that means the superior quality of fishery products suitable for human consumption.
    • The Shaphari scheme is based on the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s technical guidelines on aquaculture certification.
    • It will have two components — certifying hatcheries for the quality of their seeds and, separately, approving shrimp farms that adopt the requisite good practices.
    • The certification of hatcheries will help farmers easily identify good quality seed producers.
    • Those who successfully clear multiple audits of their operations shall be granted a certificate for a period of two years.
    • The entire certification process will be online to minimize human errors and ensure higher credibility and transparency.

    Bolstering confidence in India’s Shrimp production

    • To bolster confidence in India’s frozen shrimp produce, the country’s biggest seafood export item, the Centre has kicked off a new scheme called ‘Shaphari’ to certify hatcheries and farms that adopt good aquaculture practices.
    • Frozen shrimp is India’s largest exported seafood item.
    • But a combination of factors had hurt export volumes in recent months, including container shortages and incidents of seafood consignments being rejected because of food safety concerns.
    • Some recent consignments sourced from Indian shrimp farms being rejected due to the presence of antibiotic residue and this is a matter of concern for exporters.
    • The National Residue Control Programme for food safety issues in farm produce and pre-harvest testing system is already in place.
    • But this certification was proposed as a market-based tool for hatcheries to adopt good aquaculture practices and help produce quality antibiotic-free shrimp products to assure global consumers.

    Frozen shrimp export potential

    • Frozen shrimp is India’s largest exported seafood item. It constituted 50.58% in quantity and 73.2% in terms of total U.S. dollar earnings from the sector during 2019-20.
    • India exported frozen shrimp worth almost $5 billion in 2019-20, with the U.S. and China its the biggest buyers.
    • Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu are India’s major shrimp producing States, and around 95% of the cultured shrimp produce is exported.

  • Production of Poppy Straw

    The Central government has decided to rope in the private sector to commence production of concentrated poppy straw from India’s opium crop.

    What is the move?

    • The move aims to boost the yield of alkaloids, used for medical purposes and exported to several countries.
    • Among the few countries permitted to cultivate the opium poppy crop for export and extraction of alkaloids, India currently only extracts alkaloids from opium gum at facilities controlled by the Revenue Department.
    • This entails farmers extracting gum by manually lancing the opium pods and selling the gum to government factories.
    • The Ministry has now decided to switch to new technologies after trial cultivation reports submitted last year by two private firms showed higher extraction of alkaloids using the concentrated poppy straw (CPS).

    Opium Poppy

    • The milky fluid that seeps from cuts in the unripe poppy seed pod has, since ancient times, been scraped off and air-dried to produce what is known as opium.
    • The seedpod is first incised with a multi-bladed tool.
    • This lets the opium “gum” ooze out.
    • The semi-dried “gum” is harvested with a curved spatula and then dried in open wooden boxes.
    • The dried opium resin is placed in bags or rolled into balls for sale.

    Why such a move?

    • India’s opium crop acreage has been steadily declining over the years.
    • The CPS extraction method is expected to help cut the occasional dependence on imports of products like codeine (extracted from opium) for medical uses.

    Amendments to NDPS Act

    • Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are the three traditionally opium-growing States, where poppy crop cultivation is allowed based on licences issued annually by the Central Bureau of Narcotics.
    • While roping in private players in producing CPS and extracting alkaloids from it is likely to require amendments to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.
    • The Revenue Department has decided to appoint a consultant to help frame the bidding parameters and concession agreements for the same.

  • [pib] Sadabahar: A mango variety that bears fruits round the year

    A farmer from Kota, Rajasthan, has developed a round-the-year dwarf variety of mango called Sadabahar, which is resistant to most major diseases and common mango disorders.

    Try this PYQ:

    Q.With reference to the Genetically Modified mustard (GM mustard) developed in India, consider the following statements:

    1. GM mustard has the genes of a soil bacterium that give the plant the property of pest-resistance to a wide variety of pests.
    2. GM mustard has the genes that allow the plant cross-pollination and hybridization.
    3. GM mustard has been developed jointly by the IARI and Punjab Agricultural University.

    Which of the statements given above is/are correct? (CSP 2018)

    (a) 1 and 3 only

    (b) 2 only

    (c) 2 and 3 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

    Sadabahar

    • The fruit is sweeter in taste, comparable to langra and being a dwarf variety, is suitable for kitchen gardening, high-density plantation, and can be grown in pots for some years too.
    • Besides, the flesh of the fruits, which is bourn round the year, is deep orange with a sweet taste, and the pulp has very little fiber content which differentiates it from other varieties.
    • The bountiful nutrients packed in mango are immensely good for health.
    • This variety has been verified by the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), India, an autonomous institution of the Department of Science & Technology.

  • Land record Modernisation in India

    Updated land record system could help the landowner in many ways. However, there is a lack of an updated land record system in India. There are several factors responsible for it. The article highlights these factors.

    Need for updated land record

    • For a significant section of the rural poor, land is both an asset and a source of livelihood.
    • With livelihoods affected, the importance of land ownership for access to formal loans as well as government relief programmes became even more evident.
    • But the relatively poor availability of clear and updated land titles remains a hurdle.
    • The government of India’s Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DI-LRMP) scheme is the most recent effort in encouraging updating of land record.

    Reasons for lack of updated land record data

    The National Council of Applied Economic Research made a pioneering effort in this direction by launching NCAER Land Records and Services Index (N-LRSI) in 2020.

    Following are the finding of NCAER about the poor state of land records.

    • The dismal state of land records is due to the failure of the Indian administration to evolve from British-era land policies.
    • In addition, land record regulations and policies vary widely across Indian states/union territories.
    • Though DI-LRMP provides a common framework for reporting the progress of land record management by states/UTs, the heterogeneous nature of regulations/guidelines for land record management in India makes the progress non-uniform.
    • One of the major roadblocks in ensuring continuous updation of land records is the lack of skilled manpower in land record departments in states.
    • Another dimension relates to the poor synergy across land record departments.
    • There is a lack of synergy between the revenue department as the custodian of textual records, the survey and settlement department managing the spatial records and the registration department, which is responsible for registering land transactions.
    • The swiftness of the process of updating ownership as the result of the registration of a transaction is commonly known as mutation.
    • The information obtained from all the state/UT sources in this regard revealed that no state/UT has the provision for online mutation on the same day as the registration.

    Way forward

    • With poor inter-departmental synergy, aspiring for updated and accurate records will always be a distant goal and states/UTs should take necessary actions to have the appropriate systems in place.
    • The improved system of land records is likely to facilitate the efforts that some states/UTs are making to ease land transactions — like lowering stamp duties by the Maharashtra government.
    • Finally, these efforts are going to be instrumental for the health of India’s rural economy.

    Consider the question “How an updated and functional land record system could help transform the rural economy? What are the hurdles in creating the updated land record system?”

    Conclusion

    The governments need to take measures to remove the hurdles in the creation of a robust land record system so as to help the landowners access institutional channels of credit.

  • What are Military Farms?

    Military farms have been closed after 132 years of service.

    Read till the end to know what Project Freiswal is.

    What are Military Farms?

    • The farms were set up with the sole requirement of supplying hygienic cow milk to troops in garrisons across British India.
    • The first military farm was raised on February 1, 1889, at Allahabad.
    • Post-independence, the farms flourished with 30,000 heads of cattle in 130 farms all over India.
    • They were even established in Leh and Kargil in the late 1990s.

    Why are they shutdown?

    • The major task was the management of large tracts of defence land, production and supply of baled hay to animal holding units.
    • There have been several recommendations in the past to shut down the farms.
    • In 2012, the Quarter Master General branch had recommended their closure.
    • Again in December 2016 by Lt. Gen. DB Shekatkar (retd) committee was appointed to recommend measures to enhance combat capability and rebalance defence expenditure of the armed forces.

    Their significance

    • For more than a century, the farms with dedication and commitment supplied 3.5 crore litres of milk and 25,000 MT of hay yearly.
    • It is credited with pioneering the technique of artificial insemination of cattle and the introduction of organised dairying in India, providing yeoman service during the 1971 war.
    • It also supplied milk at the Western and Eastern war fronts as well as during the Kargil operations to the Northern Command.

    Another initiative: Project Freiswal

    • It utilizes Friesian-Sahiwal cross-breeds as a base for the evolution of a new milch strain – “Frieswal” – through interbreeding, selection and progeny testing of bulls.
    • It was introduced on 3 November 1987 at the Military Farm School and Research Centre in Meerut.
    • It had the objective of studying the genetic aspects of Holstein x Sahiwal crossbreeds and those of important indigenous cattle breeds for their improvement through selection.

  • Need for technological solutions to use water for agriculture more sustainably

    The article examine the use of water for sugarcane and rice cultivation in India and its impact. 

    Water availability and usage in India

    • As per the Central Water Commission’s reassessment of water availability, India receives a mean annual precipitation of about 3,880 billion cubic meters (BCM) but utilises only 699 BCM (18 percent) of this; the rest is lost to evaporation and other factors.
    • The demand for water is likely to be 843 BCM in 2025 and 1,180 BCM by 2050.
    • As per the UN’s report on Sustainable Development Goal-6 (SDG-6) on “Clean water and sanitation for all by 2030”, India achieved only 56.6 per cent of the target by 2019.
    • Further, as per the Niti Aayog’s Composite Water Management Index (2019), 75 per cent households in India do not have access to drinking water on their premises.
    • India ranks 120th amongst 122 countries in the water quality index.
    • India is identified as a water-stressed country with its per capita water availability declining from 5,178 cubic metre (m3)/year in 1951 to 1,544 m3 in 2011 — this is likely to go down further to 1,140 cubic metre by 2050.

    How free or highly subsidised electricity skews water use pattern

    • Despite decades of large public and private investments in irrigation, only about half of India’s gross cropped area:198 million hectares is irrigated.
    • Groundwater contributes about 64 per cent, canals 23 per cent, tanks 2 per cent and other sources 11 per cent to irrigation.
    • This results primarily from incentive policy of free or highly subsidised power, particularly in the country’s north-west, the site of the erstwhile Green Revolution.
    • Overexploitation of groundwater has made this region amongst the three highest water risk hotspots.
    • Overall, about 1,592 blocks in 256 districts in India are either critical or overexploited.

    Need to focus on rice and sugarcane

    • Agriculture uses about 78 per cent of fresh water resources.
    • As per a NABARD-ICRIER study on Water Productivity Mapping, these crops alone consume almost 60 per cent of India’s irrigation water.
    • We need a paradigm shift to increase land productivity measured as tonnes per hectare (t/ha), and to maximise applied irrigation productivity measured as kilogrammes, or Rs, per cubic metre of water (kg/m3).
    • Figure 1 shows applied irrigation water productivity against land productivity for rice and sugarcane in important growing states.
    • Note that while Punjab scores high on land productivity of rice, it is at the bottom with respect to applied irrigation water productivity.
    • In the case of sugarcane, irrigation water productivity in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu is only 1/3rd of that in Bihar and UP (Figure 2).
    • There is, thus, a need to realign cropping patterns based on per unit of applied irrigation water productivity.

    Use of technology

    • There are technologies to produce the same output of rice and sugarcane with almost half the irrigation water.
    • Jain Irrigation, for instance, has set up drip irrigation pilots for paddy and sugarcane.
    • The results of these pilots indicate while it takes 3,065 litres of water to produce 1 kg of paddy grain (yield level 7.75 t/ha) under traditional flood irrigation, under drip, it can be reduced to just 842 litres.
    • The benefit cost ratio of drip with fertigation in case of sugarcane in Karnataka is observed to be 2.64.
    • An extension to this is the “Family Drip System” innovated by Israel-based — Netafim.
    • The company has also launched its largest demonstration project in Asia at Ramthal, Karnataka.
    • Technologies like Direct Seeded Rice (DSR) and System of Rice Intensification (SRI) can also save 25-30 per cent of water compared to traditional flood irrigation.

    Need for right pricing policies

    • Technological solutions cannot make much headway unless pricing policies of agri-inputs are put on the right track and farmers are incentivised for saving water.
    • The Punjab government, along with the World Bank and J-PAL, has started some pilots with an innovative policy of “Paani Bachao Paise Kamao” to encourage rational use of water among farmers.

    Consider the question “Examine the impact of rice and sugarcane cultivation on the groundwater table in India. How technological solutions can help use water more sustainably for agriculture?”

    Conclusion

    Overall, it seems it is time to switch from the highly subsidised price policy of water/power (and even fertilisers) to direct income support on a per hectare basis, and investment policies that help with newer technologies and innovations.

  • PM-Kisan: Income support to farmers needs to be more inclusive

    The article highlights the challenge of exclusion error in the PM-KISAN and suggests measures to deal with the issue by drawing on the success of KALIA and Rythu Bandhu.

    Exclusion in PM-KISAN

    • Budget FY22 announced an allocation of Rs 65,000 crore to the PM-Kisan scheme.
    • Since 2019, the PM-Kisan has been the largest component of the agriculture budget each year.
    • The scheme is targeted at farmers who own cultivable land as per land records of the state.
    • Unfortunately, this leaves out vulnerable sections such as tenant farmers, women farmers, tribal families and landless labourers.
    • The exclusion is the result of the challenge of first identifying these people, since our existing systems do not formally recognise them as farmers.

    The need to identify farmers

    • Despite 73.2% of rural women engaging in agriculture, only 12.8% are reported to own land.
    •  Among tribal communities, of the 20 million tribal families, less than 2 million have received individual forest rights pattas; the rest are ‘invisible’ and left out of government safety nets.
    • Landless agricultural labourers and tenant farmers account for close to 150 million people in rural India, and they too are not part of state land records.
    • Although there are multiple welfare schemes for farmers, there is no standard government definition of a farmer.
    • The 2007 MS Swaminathan Committee called out that the term ‘farmer’ would include any person actively engaged in growing crops and other agricultural commodities, and would include not only landholders, but also cultivators, labourers, sharecroppers, tenants and tribal families, amongst others.

    Learning from KALIA and Rythu Bandhu

    • Odisha has been a frontrunner in implementing an inclusive farmer welfare scheme, the KALIA.
    • The KALIA provides an unconditional income support of Rs 12,500 to landless agricultural households and an annual Rs 10,000 to small and marginal land-owning farmers as well as tenant farmers.
    • Odisha leveraged existing databases such as the Paddy Procurement Automation System, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and the National Food Security Act, and deployed close to 50,000 government staff at state, district and block levels to conduct extensive on-ground verification to identify eligible beneficiaries.
    • Telangana took a different approach prior to rolling out the Rythu Bandhu Scheme, a direct benefit transfer scheme for land-owning farmers.
    • The Rythu Bandhu Scheme targeted only land-owning farmers.
    • But the state took on the onus of updating land records before implementing the scheme.
    • The revenue and agriculture departments partnered to undertake a state-wide Land Records Updation Programme (LRUP).
    • This shows that updating and digitising land records databasse is possible with focused efforts.

    Way forward

    • Instead of every scheme having its own farmer beneficiary database, the ideal solution would be to leverage the existing land records databases in every state.
    • The design should ensure women’s names are not excluded.
    • Implementation of the Forest Rights Act 2006 needs to be accelerated so that tribal families receive forest rights pattas and become part of the land records database.
    • The next challenge is to build in incentives in the process to encourage the maintenance of the land record database, such that all future transactions such as sale, gift etc. are regularly updated to increase the reliability of the records.

    Consider the question “How lack of definition of farmer leads to inclusion and exclusion errors in the schemes for farmers. Suggest the measures to deal with the issue.”

    Conclusion

    The pandemic, more so than anything else, has highlighted the need for the government to have robust social security mechanisms to reach the most vulnerable sections of the population, and making PM-Kisan more inclusive is an important step in that direction.

    Source:

    https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/pm-kisan-income-support-to-farmers-needs-to-be-more-inclusive/2217436/