What Am I

The focus of my trip to this village near Rajahmundry was to understand the problems that farmers face: For the ease of assessment I classified the agricultural workers into four categories. a) A farmer who owns a land b) A farmer who doesn't own a land c) A farmer depending on cattle d) Agricultural Labour In this edition of the series, I will focus on the problems faced a), b) mentioned above. Typically people who belong to the forward caste take-up and continue to remain in farming. Many perceived lower communities have less bonding to agriculture and easily switch to other professions. (Hence as I mentioned earlier caste is a major driving force in farming community). With Govt. allotting land to all the sections of the society, the following issues remain true to each farmer independent of their caste/creed. Category Parameter Problems associated with each Parameter Commercial Aspects Revenue a)     The inherent nature of conventional agriculture

Apart from the well known fact that more than 100,000 farmers have died in India in the past decade alone, did you know that the.. Per capita income for a farmer from Paddy is ~Rs30,000/- per crop? Cost of capital for a farmer varies anything from 24-75% per annum? While the cost of drilling a bore is Rs40,000-50,000/-, the cost of installation of a motor and getting access for power to that motor costs another Rs1-1.5 lacs? If a person has less than one acre of land holding, he cannot even drill a bore? Much of the farming society doesn't own any farming land? Caste drives the farming activities in India? The debt write offs mentioned by Govt. impact only 10-15% of the total farming community? In spite of the wide-spread un-employment there is a dearth of labour available to a farmer? Farming as an activity has the highest attrition rates? Minimum support price offered to the farmers doesn't include the travel costs, and those costs are to be borne by the farmer hims