Marginal farmers must have income diversification to survive
The most striking feature of Indian farm HHs as per the latest NSS 77th round (2018-19) report is that the farmers’ income has increased but it is marked with large inter-state and inter-farm disparities. Between the SAS 2012-13 and SAS 2018-19, the average monthly income of agricultural HHs from all sources – wages, leasing out land, crop production, livestock, and non-farm activities – has increased from Rs. 6426 to Rs. 10218. It suggests an increase in annual income at about 8% in nominal prices and 6% in real price with base 2011-12. However, the most disquieting feature is that out of total income earned by these HHs, only 37.17% is earned from cultivation as against 40% from wage employment. Dependency on income from livestock rearing is also high as nearly one-fifth of the income is coming from this source. The situation is quite vulnerable for the marginal farmers (having less than 1 ha of land), depicting hardships in their sustenance solely on agriculture. Marginal farmers face a range of challenges, including low marketable surplus, weak access to credit, input and output markets and land tenure issues. The NSS 77th round survey shows, more than 17% of land in India is held by tenants with an area under tenancy holding to be 13%. Further, only 52% of paddy farmers could sell their crop and even among them only a quarter sold it through formal agencies while three quarters chose to sell it through local markets. Over half of the agricultural households carry some amount of debt, with the average amount being close to Rs. 75,000. Moreover, farming is increasingly becoming unremunerative on small land holdings due to high cost of inputs, variability in prices and temperature, and yield risk due to recurrent floods and famines. The small landholders are dominant in low per capita income states viz. Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh, earning a much higher share of income from wages and livestock activities. In this backdrop, the present article focuses on the income earning potential by the marginal farmer households owning less than 1 ha based on a comprehensive survey across 20 major states in India (The Development Intelligence Unit – a collaborative venture between Transforming Rural India Foundation and Sambodhi, undertook an independent survey of 6115 marginal farmer HHs) as well as on the data provided by NSS 70th and 77th rounds of NSSO.
Agriculture Practices
Ownership of Land and Utilization: The All-India Agriculture Census provides a omprehensive picture on the landholding and utilization pattern of marginal farmers. As per the report the percentage share of land cultivated by the marginal farmers has increased from 8.99% in 1970-71 to 13.39% in 1985-86 and then to 24.03% in 2015-16. It indicates that there has been almost 80% increase in the share of landholding by marginal farmers in the last 30 years or so. The percentage share of number of marginal farmers has increased from 50.98% in 1970-71 to 57.79% in 1985-86 and to 68.45% in 2015-16, an increase by 18 percent. The average landholding by marginal farmers has stayed stable throughout at around 0.39 ha. (0.975 acres), while the average landholding by all farmers has decreased by 36%, i.e., from 1.69 ha (4.22 acres) to 1.08 ha (3.875 acres.) It is observed that with an increase in population, fragmentation and division of land holdings, the area cultivated by marginal farmers and their percentage share in total farmers has considerably increased. While the average landholding size of marginal farmers has remained unchanged, the average landholding size of all farmers has decreased, indicating a decline in the average landholding size of large category of farmers. The findings from the primary survey conducted shows that the average size of landholding of marginal farmers is 1.22 acres of land and is sync with the landholding and utilization of cultivable land data given in the Census i.e., 0.95 acres. Further distribution of these farmers by size of their land holding shows that two-third of these farmers cultivated more than 1 acre of land during 2021-22. The survey also showed that only 11,12% of these farmers leased-in lands for cultivation and the average area leased-in is 0.83 acres. Irrigation: Accessing irrigation facilities is one of the important factors for sustaining agriculture productivity for these farmers cultivating smaller size of land. The survey observed that 56% farmers have access to irrigation and among them more than three-quarter of these farmers used ground water as main source of irrigation. Among those using groundwater, over 50% use electric pump sets while 45.64% use diesel pump sets. Only a few, close to 4% farmers have installed solar pump sets to extract water from tubewells. Cropping pattern: Major Crops Grown & Shifts in the Cropping Pattern: The respondents were asked about the major crops grown in a year and if they have made any changes in the cropping pattern during the last five years. As can be observed there is marginal shift away from cereals to cash crops. Top 4 crops cultivated by marginal farmers in the past 5 years are cereals, mainly paddy, wheat, maize and oilseed like Mustard/Rapeseed/Rai. The only noticeable change in a span of 5 years is cultivation of potato in place of green gram/moong.
