Deep Roots

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Image: Reuters Market Light India (RMLI)

The human and financial resources that enable India’s agricultural growth have been predominantly domestic, helping to ensure its sustainability

consensus may not occur in other spheres of the economy,

where competing visions have often led to sharp swings in

policy, as is only normal in vibrant democracies. However,

agricultural policy, especially the role of smallholder family

farms in achieving food, nutritional and livelihood security,

has been remarkably consistent.

Does this historical success suggest that the trajectory of

support will continue? Even as it can be reasonably assumed

that there is policy continuity in the medium term, new chal-

lenges to family farms will require smart responses from

policymakers to sustain the gains made in the past few decades.

Looming large above all the immediate risks is that of climate

change. This inevitable and uncontrollable global phenom-

enon threatens the very existence of smallholder family farms

and may well wipe out most of the gains made over the past

five decades, if not confronted directly and immediately.

Family farms could deploy capital and technology efficiently

to contribute to national food security due to their nimbleness

in decision-making and low overheads. This strength could

again be leveraged to help them adapt to climate-smart agri-

culture. But for that to happen the ecosystem will have to be

strengthened to deliver the necessary knowledge and financial

support. This calls for an effort across national and internal

provincial borders.

The pressures of a rapidly industrializing and urbaniz-

ing country are already telling on smallholder agriculture.

Conflicts over transfer of farmland to industry and urban

housing are increasingly becoming complex and often

violent. A balance between the two seemingly conflicting

goals of economic growth and sustainable management of

natural resources will have to emerge from the collective

wisdom of policymakers and the community engaging in

intense dialogue. Productivity enhancement with a “more-

crop-per-drop” approach, recently urged by the Prime

Minister, will have to be mainstreamed, especially in rain-

fed, dryland areas.

Finally, India will once again have to place its trust in the

strength of its family-run farms to gradually integrate its

farm sector with the global economy. It is already competi-

tive against major rivals in a host of farm products. The

current global food trade regime is no doubt imperfect and

the ground is tilted in favour of industrialized countries.

However, a calibrated opening up will yield immediate

gains by aligning domestic prices with global ones and

allow India’s hard-working farmers and its efficient private

sector to exploit opportunities in new markets. This will

also help to eventually reorient the huge subsidies on inputs

(such as fertilizer) towards investments in infrastructure,

research and extension. India’s deeply embedded democratic

processes are actually an asset, not a hindrance, in helping

to usher in this transition.

Five decades ago, India’s leadership achieved the seemingly

impossible leap of imagination to visualize farm productivity

and prosperity from impoverished family farms. A similar leap

of faith is required to bring India’s agriculture into the new

millennium. Now, as then, family farms can lead the way.

eep

oots