The Crisis of Smallholder Agriculture

 The biggest concern at present should be about the severe constraints that the small and marginal farmers, who constitute 85% of all farming households and 50% of the total population of India, face. These farmers put in a huge amount of back breaking family labour into their farming. This labour is grossly underpaid at about Rs 100 per day as revealed from surveys that we have conducted in Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh. Whereas the latest statutory minimum daily wage in the state is Rs 335 for unskilled, Rs368 for semiskilled, Rs 421 for skilled and Rs 471 for highly skilled. Farming is a highly skilled operation and so the farmers should be paid Rs 471 in the interests of equity. Especially because the analysis of the consumption expenditure surveys that we simultaneously carry out show that the respondents are suffering from chronic hunger. One can easily imagine what raising the household labour wage to Rs 471 per day will do to the farmgate price of agricultural produce. When we paid a wage of Rs 220 per day (the statutory minimum wage for unskilled labour in MP last year) and also a fifty percent profit over and above their operating costs to the farmers with whom we work in our organic farming project (https://kansariorganics.in/) the farmgate price of our organic wheat shot up to Rs 27 per kg as opposed to the Rs 17 prevailing in the market for chemical wheat and the Rs 20 offered under the MP government's MSP scheme (which is anyway available to a limited number of farmers). After adding on the costs of the subsidy we provided to the farmers for organic composting and bio-enzyme rich liquid making and cleaning and grading the price of our wheat in Indore is Rs 35 per kg whereas the chemical wheat of similar quality sells at Rs 25 per kg. Few people are prepared to buy our wheat at this premium despite its being the cheapest authentic organic wheat available in this country because we are not charging any profits or management costs which are met by grant funding. This in turn means that there is a need for direct transfers to farmers by the government to compensate them properly as the market will not do so. Since the chemical agriculture being practised now is both economically and ecologically unsustainable this cash transfer should be given to farmers to switch the country from chemical monoculture to organic biodiverse agriculture combined with huge investments in communitarian ecosystem conservation and restoration, compost and bio-enzyme rich liquid making on a very large scale to replace chemical fertilisers and decentralized renewable energy production from gasification of agricultural and forest biomass.

But why have we come to this sorry pass? There were four major constraints to agriculture in the British colonial times as follows - high land rents under the zamindari and ryotwari systems, usury, these two in turn prevented investments in soil and water conservation and in situ irrigation development and the low availability of fertilisers. We had innumerable varieties of crops including rice and wheat varieties that were of a high yielding type and therefore there was no constraint as regards to crop varieties. There was no storage problem either as there were traditional methods of decentralised storage of crops that were very effective. With independence the first obstacle was removed to a great extent even though land reforms did not take place as much as they should have and this released the energies of the peasantry in farming leading to a considerable boost in agricultural production. However, usury continued and constrained investments in soil and water conservation and in situ irrigation. Therefore, what was required was greater land reform, control of usury and extension of cheap credit, heavy investments in forest, soil and water conservation and in situ irrigation development and last but not the least heavy investments in composting to increase organic manure availability which is a highly labour intensive process. Animal manure on its own is not enough for the huge agricultural land in this country and so agricultural residue has to be mixed with a little organic manure and composted to greatly multiply the availability of manure. Beginning with Albert Howard there have been many experts in composting in India and so the needs of fertiliser can be easily met through widespread composting and bioenzyme rich organic liquid making. Unfortunately, none of these were done and so agriculture continued to be constrained and combined with the other folly at the time of independence of not implementing compulsory and free school education which would have put boys and girls in school instead of them getting married and producing children which led to a population explosion, we faced a food crisis in the 1960s. There was no nationalism involved in going for the green revolution. It was a neo-colonial collaboration between the American MNCs and the Savarna elite who were ruling this country and still do ( the British too were able to rule over India for such a long time because of the collaboration they received from the Savarna elites. they would have been kicked out in 1857 itself if they had not received extensive support from the Savarnas who had benefited from their rule), to ignore the possibilities of a policy of land reform, control of usury, investment in forest, soil and water conservation and in situ irrigation and widespread composting and instead foist hybrid seeds, big dams, deep tubewells, chemical fertilisers and pesticides and cheap coal fired electricity all heavily subsidised by the Government. This chemical monoculture has devastated both agriculture and food availability, especially in the rural areas where there is chronic hunger.

There is only one solution to the crisis of agriculture, water scarcity. rural unemployment and chronic hunger - gradually switching the whole country to organic biodiverse agriculture over a period of five years by providing heavy subsidies to farmers to make the switch by investing in forest, soil and water conservation, in situ irrigation and composting and generation of decentralised renewable energy from gasification of agricultural and forest biomass. Especially composting because it is a labour intensive process and absolutely essential to replace chemical fertilisers. This is difficult though because after 50 years of chemical agriculture most farmers have lost the belief that it is possible to do agriculture in any other way and it is extremely hard to convince them to make this switch as we have found out when we have tried to fund farmers to make this switch.