Title : Challenges in agriculture development in India
Abstract:
Agriculture sector in India has achieved many milestones such as being largest producers of milk, millets, pulses and jute and second largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, cotton, fruits and vegetables in the world. However, low productivity is all pervasive. In this talk we focus on the factors that are contributing low productivity and challenges in addressing them. These challenges can be categorized into physical, technological, institutional and policy related. We present detailed analysis of these factors. Among the physical factors we observe that the size of the landholdings is decreasing over time making it difficult to mechanize fully and take advantage of economies of scale. Fresh water availability is also decreasing for irrigation due to improper management of water resources and increasing demand. There are also cases of desertification and soil erosion due to poor conservation practices. Technology use has suffered because of low literacy among farmers and small size of holding. Property rights of agricultural land has been poor as land disputes flood court cases which takes years to resolve. Both input and output markets are inefficient leading to high cost of marketing. Policy supports mostly addresses ad hoc concerns not the long-term problems. Poorly organized agriculture extension service is leading to poor practice son farm. These problems need a multipronged cohesive approach to address the deteriorating conditions of Indian agriculture.
Audience Take Away Notes:
The audience will be able to understand the dimensions of agricultural development and what policy initiatives are needed to address them. This will help researcher and policy makers in the developing countries to analyze their own agriculture sector, identify weaknesses and suggest corrective actions. The study gives practical solutions which may be useful in other countries’ contexts. It will provide new information to assist in a design problem
