PLANT DISEASE

          VIABLE OPTIONS IN AGRICULTURE- AN ELATION OF HOPE FOR PROSPERITY

           

          Agriculture exuberance or farm distress, which of these issues leading to farmer suicides in our country? why? These are the central questions now on national attention.Being an agriculture country, where millions of people, nearly sixty percent of the population, primarily depend on farming as their occupation for livelihoods, lacks concrete decisions to safeguard the life of farmers.Agriculture employs 53% of the workforce in our country.But the present happenings in various states indeed not a good sign to indicate the prosperity of agriculture.As far as the protest and suicide of farmers in many states point, it is not a onetime one so it to be addressed by the government for the sake of farmer welfare.Protesters were demanding the lift of their burden and distress loaded with the drastic agriculture policy implementation by the subsequent rulers at the centre and state.

                           Farm distress occurs seasonable as a problem where the farmer was unable to manage his farming and marketing.This time the failure in farming was due to abundant crop production and subsequent inability to fetch a fair price.In either case, the abundant or scarce situations have forced the farmer to down in debt and decided to create a panic situation of throw produce and pour milk on road and to end life.Can't we overcome from farm crisis by adopting suitable economic and scientific measures? What are the real factors of agrarian distress so it happens frequently even billions of rupees expended as loan waiver?

ECONOMIC ASPECTS

    In India, Agriculture growth has been volatile and it contributes to only 17.5% of GDP (2015-2016).India produced 252 million tonnes of food grains during that period.But our demand expected to be 300 million tonnes in 2025 needing an annual growth of 2%.In scrutinizing the current issues on economic viewpoint terms find that both scarce and abundant production has its repercussion on market.The market is, in general, an essential place to transact by the predetermined notion.Production of goods economically progresses the market function in terms of creating employment and revenue.But in the present agriculture production system prevails in India, the farmer can not able to produce potential yield level in sufficient quantity and quality.The existing conditions force to perform market inefficiency and further loss to the producer.If on the other, he could produce more yield by the utilization of prevailing favourable conditions in the environment then confront the impediment to earning high price.This is the limitation and which lacks efficiency and a good market.So farmer fails in both cases of market function.The underlined fact is that the condition at which produce deficiency goes to scarcity and marketable surplus leads to glut.The above cases ultimately affect the income of farmers.These are the issues well known by everyone.At this juncture, another aspect of the importance of matter is the issue of considering the reference income of employees those who associate other work is far more better than farmers.While taking on the fact of the cost of production, it varies by the crop, variety, crop season, method or type of farming and input used for cropping.All of the above components differ time to time.So production should be predicted to do better to avoid distress sale.Presently in more states, distress happened because of the problem of plenty with good yield by the good monsoon and subsequent fallout of lower price.Our government's critical concern is on control of food inflation.Food inflation control policy decides the ad-hoc policy of export and import of commodities to overcome the situation of shortage or excess and in principle, the authorities only have the obligation to maintain food rights of the citizen.Thus, the Governments deprive farmer interests which lead to the collapse of agriculture commodity prices and deepens the aggravation of the distress in rural income.Meantime one must bear in mind the fact that fragmentation of land caused financial instability and quality production.The fragmented piece of land constricts profitable production of high graded produce.But the real figure is India holds the worlds second largest agricultural land area (157.3 million hectares) of which 86% of land holdings are less than two hectares.In the present global environment, our country's climatic factors are varied and favourable.It has about 20 agroclimatic regions and all 15 major climates in the world exist here. Though the major farming concern of action is the water deficit.By the year 2030, India will be a water deficit country in the world.The current implication shows the situation will be worst due to low water footprint because of climate change.

SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES

              As the fact, science leads to further go of mankind and scientifically proven technologies support farming by lower cost, improve productivity and even reduce risk attached in farming.Some of the prospectors of agriculture have the opinion that agriculture should be a viable option for anyone who takes as a profession. Entrepreneurship trait should be developed among farmers in this part to attract new people in farming who can make agribusiness models viable.For the purpose, agencies have able to provide correct information, technologies and efficiency to farmer both for pre-harvest applications and post-harvest use cases.The initiative like agriculture startups provide technical application support, mechanization, image analysis technology for soil scanning and information technology shall be considered as pro-farmer approaches.Scientific application opportunities in the areas like how to increase crop production by utilizing pest and disease surveillance and market forecast,improving the nutritional value of the crops,usage of environment friendly farm inputs for reduction in input price for farmers,improving the overall process-driven supply chain,reducing wastage in the distribution system by better post-harvest handling,making easy farm mechanization available and enabling connectivity of farmer with better market system by interlinking the consumer and producer are to be considered as the urgent to provide better decision-making.The most important aspect of sustainable farming is cropping pattern because the structural shift of cropping patterns dominating farm outputs.So it is very much needed to maintain the balance of agriculture production components by better management practices.Water is essential for farming so the next important factor is irrigation and consider it critically for more crop per drop of water.Finally, for the end result, the knowledge dissemination system should be sound and reliable by informing farmers about the opportunities available- be it credit or technologies, market or climate.


SOLUTIONS TO BE CONSIDERED

              Real problems plaguing Indian agriculture is as follows and here needed a heated discussion.
Frequent droughts
Erratic and insufficient monsoons
Flooding
Low rural wages
Collapse of agriculture prices
Horticulture crops are outside the ambit of MSP operations
Weak public distribution system
Inefficiencies in the agricultural supply chains
Inefficiencies in the knowledge dissemination systems
Market risks have become an integral feature
Decline in employment
Adhoc exports and imports can undermine any intervention
Per capita income of Indian increased except agriculturist
Malpractices in the existing unorganised agriculture markets
Limited access to superior technology
Farmers give up farming
   If anyone issues of the above can be addressed by the government, it will certainly impact the future of agriculture.Agriculture cannot be out of crisis and distress.Agriculture depends on nature and nature does the action of farming.Our intervention and policy can reduce the vulnerability of farming.Do outline the plan to prevent further recursive happenings.