Happy Pooja Holidays

As the country celebrates the festival of the triumph of good over evil – known by different names around the country like Pooja, Dusshera, Navratri, etc., – my best wishes to all of you on this auspicious occasion! The nine day festival is a celebration of woman power!

One of the nine days is devoted to Mata Annapurneshwari. ?Goddess Parvati has been revered as an Annapurna or the Goddess of food. Her temple in Varanasi is a very important place of worship.

It is Mata Annapurneshwari’s blessing that India ?as a country is blessed with sufficient food for our population. We should worship the Goddess today as a mark of our gratitude for her blessings.

“Annam Prabrahma Swaroopam”. Food is ?divine! Be respectful and grateful when you eat food!

It is also time for us to show our gratitude to the farmers and the entire ecosystem of food that grows, processes, transports, trades and brings food to our homes. Some of us who have been working in the field of agriculture all our lives can take pride in fact that we played a small part in this process but the main hero in agriculture and food production is the farmer. But is he/she recognized and rewarded financially for his work? Is there respect for the farmer in the society?

On this occasion we have to recognize the back breaking work done by our farmers to produce crops, milk, meat, eggs, fisheries and several other food items that nourish us every day. We use a general term for all farmers but actually there are many categories of farmers – those with irrigation facilities, those who are dependent on rain for irrigating their fields, those who grow annual crops some of them being food grains, those who grow fruits and vegetables, etc – each one has a different experience of farming.

This article is written for all those urban bred people who might not be very familiar with agriculture. The idea is to create awareness about how difficult it is to produce food – the main reason why we should treat food with all the respect it deserves.

Agriculture is not simple.? Many people may not be able to understand the tremendous difficulties and risks faced by the farmers. The sheer physical drudgery of their work in the field is daunting! Their risk taking ability is very low as they don’t have bank balances to fall back upon. In case of loss of income from the crop they grow for months together the farmer goes into a distress situation financially.

Weather & Abiotic risks. Agriculture is fully dependent on the weather. It is in open fields and unprotected. There is no way the farmer can protect his crop from vagaries of weather. This is the greatest risk faced by farmers. Especially due to the climate change the weather extremities have gone up. Rising temperatures, unseasonal rains, unpredicted spells of dry weather leading to drought and many such events due to climate change have devastating effect on the crops and in turn on the lives of the farmers. They can lose even up to the full crop just before harvesting due to a cyclone or a hailstorm or a torrential rain. While the insurance industry is trying to provide products that can give him relief we still have miles to go.

Biotic risks.? Outbreaks of pest and diseases and the struggle the farmer undergoes to control them in a cost-effective way. It is a continuous fight with pests and diseases including weeds. Both the pests and the control mechanisms keep evolving. New pests keep coming. Climate change is bringing new pests and diseases into play and scientists from both public and private sectors keep working on finding methods of controlling such pests. They try to transfer such solutions and the technology behind them to the farmers to equip them to fight pests and diseases.

Market risks. The greatest risk farmer faces next to weather risk. At the time of planting the crop the farmer has no idea of the price he will get when the output comes after a few months. Prices might crash by the time his crop comes to market, he may not have storage facilities or the financial capacity to hold the stocks till prices improve. 87% of our farmers are small and marginal with about two acres of land holding on an average. The annual income (profit) from farming for most of our farmers is not more than Rs. 25000/- per acre on the higher side.

Risk of getting cheated. A farmer, many times, is vulnerable to get cheated by the traders who buy his produce. There is no scientific method used by the traders to assess the quality of the output in many crops. He / She is also at the mercy of the input retailer or the private money lender who give him credit. Quality of the inputs farmer purchases, if he/she is not very careful, can be low which can lead to loss of output from the crop. While the world is moving towards digitization and there are efforts to digitize many processes of agriculture the low digital proficiency of the farmer might keep him/her at a disadvantage. This digital divide could be a source of him / her getting cheated or losing money in future unless his/her digital proficiency is built up through capacity building efforts.

Risk from lack of knowledge. The farmer looks for technical advice when he/she is faced with difficult problems in the process of production. Most of such problems are related to lack of knowledge ?or information. It could be about how to get bank loans, how to fight a particular disease that has affected the crop/livestock/fish/birds and lack of advisory on such matters. He / She depends on Bank officials, Insurance officials, Universities, research Institutions, extension staff of government and field staff of commercial organizations, etc. Timeliness of credit and advice is the most important thing in agriculture because of the seasonality of business. If the he / she ?misses the optimal crop planting time the impact on output could be high. Lack of bank loan can force him to go to private money lenders, lack of insurance can lead to loss of money due to crop losses or death of livestock, etc. While efforts are going on to bridge this gap it remains a major area of risk for the farmer.

We always have to keep in mind that the farmer is in a production process. He / She produces something that is to be sold, after retaining some foodgrains for consumption at home. The marketable surplus with the farmer goes up when the yields go up and the output is high. His / Her decisions are mainly focused on trying to improve his/her income from the crop and trying to survive for the day.

There are certain farmers who might be better off with the profits due to cultivation of some of the vegetables, flowers, fruits, etc., but this is a minority. Where the output is purchased through a contract at a profitable price (called a closed loop system or contract cultivation) for the farmer (example: Sugarcane farmers) it might be more profitable for the farmers. But majority of the other farmers are trying to make both ends meet.

Governments at Centre and in States do try to make farmers lives easier but their impact is to be seen. Unfortunately farmers do not have a unified voice. Their needs are not properly represented because most of the farmers organizations are politicized.

Urban Consumers

Urban consumers are well protected by the governments actions to control food inflation. Abrupt import/export policies of agricultural output are influenced by the interests of the consumers and the food inflation. Many times such shifts in import/export policies lead to losses for the farmers.

When we have plenty of food on our table let us remember that each ingredient that goes into cooking our food is produced by a farmer. We may be rich and well educated working in important jobs but we all are dependent on the food that farmers produce in spite of the drudgery, risks and difficulties they face. Let us remember that the farmer is not producing with some great higher purpose of feeding the world. He / She is producing just to survive in life and to improve his/her incomes. He / She is in business. Let us remember that.

We put too much burden on the farmer by saying that he/she has to produce in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner, he/she has to produce safe food that is free from chemical residues, he/she has to reduce emissions and help the country to achieve SDGs …… while these all are important for the country and for the world, he/she might look at all these as elitist thoughts which are a burden we are placing on the farmer without addressing the basic need of the farmer – to make both ends meet. The farmer will do all these if they give him/her good income and make his/her farming profitable. He /She will not do these ‘good things’ at the cost of his/her income. Because it is a matter of survival for him/her.

The urban consumers have to remember this. They have access to social media and make noise when Tomato price touches 100/kg. The same consumer does not mind paying Rs.400 per movie ticket plus another Rs. 200 for pop corn in the theatre!? Just remember that the farmer does not have the luxury of such infrastructure, protection from summer and winter, air-conditioned houses and movie theatres and money to order food from fancy restaurants, etc. By paying slightly more for food if you are making sure that the farmer is getting adequate profits to survive and go for the next planting it would be great.

Data shows that less than 30% of the price paid by the consumer actually goes to the farmer. This is too low. The supply chain in between the farmer and the consumer takes away most of this 70% of the price consumer pays. Efforts are going on to reduce the links in this supply chain and connect farmers directly to markets to increase his share of consumer price to at least 50-60%.

Many of the young children of farmers are not interested to continue farming due to lack of profits, physical drudgery, lack of infrastructure in villages and other reasons. What will happen if all youngsters go out of farming? We have to think. It is time to make farming an attractive profession with reasonable profits. Our villages should provide all the urban infrastructure and facilities so that the young people are attracted back into villages and farming.

We have more than 14 cr farmers who own land. We may be having an equal number of farmers who cultivate land through lease arrangements and may not own the land. 15% of our farmers are women. ?More than 50 - 60 cr people dependent on agriculture and allied fields, (the food ecosystem), need to be remembered on this day as we worship Mata Annapurneshwari ?as a part of the Navratri festival!

Don’t put the farmer on a high pedestal by calling them ‘Annadata’. This is flattery only to deceive him/her! It is like calling the housewife ‘Grihalakshmi’ and doing nothing to empower her! Making them 'feel good' is not a permanent solution!

Mata Annapurneshwari represents the farmer who produces in the field and the housewife who converts the farmers produce into a delicious and nutritious food on the table! ?Worship Mata Annapurneshwari and also take care of both the farmer and the housewife!

Enjoy Pooja Holidays!!