By IANS
New Delhi : More than 40 percent of marginal and small farmer households dislike their occupation and would rather give it up. To stem this, it is vital to improve their education levels and skills, says a report.
The government should also expand institutional credit facilities to rural areas to meet the requirements of farmers in the unorganised sector who number around 166 million, says a report on the unorganised sector by Arjun Sengupta, a former economic adviser to late prime minister Indira Gandhi.
The study said that 86 percent of these were small and marginal farmers.
“Improved education levels among them will increase their awareness levels and may also lead to greater cooperation among them. This will make them better organised for collective action and better equipped to anticipate market trends,” it says.
It has noted with concern the distress among farmers and said it is important to introduce a safety net to ensure minimum income for them.
“The problems of farmers, particularly of the small and marginal land holders, have been further compounded by the slowdown in the agriculture sector during the 90s.”
The report, which deals in detail with the unorganised sector in agriculture and non-agriculture areas, notes that declining institutional support, particularly of investment in irrigation and research, has had an adverse impact on agricultural growth.
“Private investment in the sector, though increased, has not been able to substitute for the declining public investment,” the 376-page report asserts.
The report says that there has been no major breakthrough in technology in the agriculture sector after the Green Revolution of the 1970s, adding that productivity deceleration was a major factor for the decline in farm output.
“This concurred with the downturn in world prices, which impacted domestic farm prices more than in earlier decades because of greater openness. The consequence has been that farm incomes became more volatile and decelerated more than the output in many cases,” the report says.
Besides, the risk factor has to be mitigated through adequate insurance and credit facilities. At the same time, the outreach and efficiency of the institutional credit sources have to be improved.
This is important to protect the small and marginal farmers still relying heavily on private moneylenders who charge high interest rates and practise unscrupulous means to perpetuate indebtedness.