Agricultural Reforms and Farmers – Markets

Varada Ranjane

It was a long time theoretical demand that ‘farmers should be seen as entrepreneurs, and farming should be treated like a business.’ Since the recent agricultural reforms are enforced, this claim is again in the limelight but with several questions!

The central government introduced largely 3 reformative bills in both the houses. These bills are related to agricultural marketing, limitations on stock hoarding, and the empowerment of farmers to buy them. They are largely taken as the privatization of agriculture and making it freer from the clutches of Middleman. But this rhetoric of ‘privatization’ is not connected with the entering entities in agriculture in the future, but with the farmers itself. Farming in India is still the most unorganized sector. In some pockets of India, agriculture still is subsistence. Cultivation practices are distant from the standards that the market demands. When it comes to small and marginal farmers, (which accounts for 85% of total farmers of the country) farm produce becomes more vulnerable at marketing. Thus agriculture is a private affair while making the decisions from tillage to post-harvest management.

The market is seen as a self-regulating process. But the Indian agriculture market is prone to the periodicity of monsoon. The study of the last two rainy seasons shows that the phenomenon of climate change has affected agriculture badly in the subcontinent. The sowing seasons are delayed and so is the harvesting. Such shifts exposed crops to the attacks of various seasonal diseases and pests. This again causes less supply of inputs like seeds for next sowing. Thus both the production and supply sides of agriculture inputs are disturbed.

Also, the entrepreneurship component mentioned comes with the horizontal knowledge of the marketing of produce. The reforms without ensuring such knowledge will take a longer time to reflect. Farmers are confused with the sudden implementation and the conduct of the process followed by law-makers. This covid pandemic time is testing the resilience of all the sectors, Agriculture is no exception to that. The effects will be interesting to see.

(Varada Ranjane is an Agriculture graduate and student of Masters in Public Policy at IIT, Bombay. She is also an Agriculture officer working in the Vidarbha region.)