Comrades Editorial · 30 Sep 2026 (PDF)
In this edition
- Towards Holistic Farmer Welfare in India Agriculture & Rural
Agriculture & Rural
Towards Holistic Farmer Welfare in India
Source This editorial is based on “Revisiting the farmer question” published in the Indian Express on 29/09/2026. The article highlights that despite employing 46% of workers, agriculture’s low GDP share demands shifting from yield-centric goals to an integrated farmer-income framework, addressing land fragmentation, climate risks, and market asymmetries. India may no longer be an agriculture-dominated economy, but it remains deeply dependent on it. This paradox, contributing barely 15–18% to GDP while employing 46% of the workforce, demands shifting from yield-centric targets to a farmer-centric income framework. Although schemes like PM-KISAN, PMFBY, and AgriStack build resilience, overcoming land fragmentation, water stress, and market asymmetries remains vital for rural sustainability. What Key Developments has India Undertaken to Promote Farmers’ Welfare?- Direct Financial Assistance and Income Support:
- The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) has transformed income support by leveraging the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system.
- As of the 23rd Instalment In June 2026, over ₹4.46 lakh crore has been directly credited into the aadhaar-seeded bank accounts of more than 11 crore farmer families.
- By removing intermediaries, this direct financial assistance of ₹6,000 annually helps small and marginal farmers manage agricultural inputs without falling into the trap of informal credit sources.
- The Union Budget 2026–27 reflects continued commitment with a dedicated ₹60,000 Crore Allocation for the scheme.
- Comprehensive Crop Insurance and Risk Mitigation:
- To protect farmers from climate extremes and crop failures, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) stands as the world’s largest crop insurance scheme.
- Recent 2025–26 data shows that against a farmer premium contribution of ₹36,055 crore, an overwhelming ₹1.92 lakh crore has been paid out in insurance claims to over 23.22 crore beneficiaries—yielding an impressive 5:1 return ratio in the farmer’s favour.
- To ensure accountability, the newly operationalized DigiClaim module automatically applies a 12% Penalty on insurance companies for delayed claim settlements, ensuring faster claim realization.
- Enhanced Institutional Credit and Financial Inclusion:
- Ensuring access to timely and affordable credit is a massive priority. For FY 2025–26, the agricultural credit target has been scaled to a record ₹32.50 lakh crore.
- Additionally, the Reserve Bank Of India (RBI) recently increased the limit for collateral-free short-term agricultural loans from ₹1.60 lakh to ₹2.00 lakh per borrower.
- Through the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) framework, farmers who demonstrate prompt repayment receive an additional 3% subvention incentive, effectively reducing their interest rate to 4%, which severely undercuts exploitative local moneylenders.
- Digital Agriculture Infrastructure and Data Registries:
- The recent approval of the Digital Agriculture Mission (with a ₹2,817 crore budget outlay) is digitizing the farming ecosystem.
- The core of this is AgriStack, a farmer-centric Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) comprising the farmers’ registry, geo-referenced village maps, and the crop sown registry.
- Currently, 19 States have signed MoUs, and comprehensive soil profile mapping spanning 142 million hectares is underway. This technological integration allows targeted delivery of subsidies and highly accurate yield estimations.
- E.g., Bharat-VISTAAR, serves as an AI-powered digital public infrastructure platform that provides Indian farmers with real-time, personalized, and location-specific agricultural guidance.
- Modernization of Agricultural Trade and Market Access:
- Breaking the monopoly of local middlemen, the National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) has electronically integrated 1,656 mandis across India by March 2026.
- The platform now hosts over 1.80 crore registered farmers, 2.73 lakh traders, and 4,724 Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). With over 204.76 lakh metric tonnes of recent trade volume, the system ensures transparent price discovery across 247 notified commodities.
- Furthermore, integration with Electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (e-NWR) allows farmers to store produce securely based on standardized assaying and avoid distress sales during harvest gluts.
- Sustainable Practices and Soil Health Restoration:
- Promoting chemical-free agriculture is central to long-term welfare, heavily supported by the PM-PRANAM Scheme. This initiative aims to reduce national chemical fertilizer spending by ₹20,000 crore.
- It incentivizes states by transferring 50% of subsidy savings back to them when they adopt organic farming and alternative bio-fertilizers (like Zinc-solubilising bio-fertilisers).
- Combined with the ongoing push for Nano Urea and precision agriculture micronutrients, these steps prevent soil degradation, restore nutritional balance, and improve the overall yield grade of Indian produce.
- Energy Security and Additional Income Generation:
- The PM-KUSUM Scheme simultaneously de-diesels the farm sector and creates a parallel revenue stream for farmers.
- By August 2026, over 11.49 lakh off-grid solar pumps had been installed nationwide, with total solar capacity exceeding 10,203 MW. Farmers can utilize barren farm land to install solar plants, generating 16-18 lakh units per MW annually.
- This ensures reliable daytime irrigation power, reduces massive diesel expenses, and enables farmers to earn supplemental income (often ₹25,000 to ₹80,000 per hectare) by selling surplus grid power back to electricity distribution companies.
- Technology Adoption through Women Empowerment:
- Modernizing field operations while boosting rural livelihoods, the Namo Drone Didi Scheme provides advanced agricultural drones to 15,000 Women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) between 2024 and 2026.
- Supported by an 80% central financial assistance subsidy, these women are trained as drone pilots to offer precision spraying services for fertilizers and pesticides.
- This not only optimizes input efficiency and reduces the health hazards of manual spraying for farmers but also generates an estimated ₹1 lakh annual additional income for the participating SHGs, driving holistic economic empowerment.
- Transitioning to Climate-Smart Agriculture:
- To protect crop yields and secure farmers’ incomes against erratic weather patterns, the government has heavily prioritized climate-resilient farming and research. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has developed numerous specialized crop strains tailored for adverse conditions.
- For instance, in August 2024, 109 new climate-resilient and biofortified seed varieties were released across 61 crops.
- Examples of these climate-tolerant varieties include the highly drought-resistant Arhar (Pigeon Pea) AKT-801 and Kharif Sorghum CSH-16 (designed for dryland farming), as well as Wheat HD-3288, which shows robust resilience to high temperatures and heat stress.
- Bolstering Agricultural Infrastructure and Logistics:
- Developing robust post-harvest infrastructure is crucial to reducing food wastage, preventing distress sales by farmers, and improving the overall value realization of their agricultural produce.
- The government is implementing the world’s largest grain storage plan in the cooperative sector, which converges schemes like the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) to build decentralized warehouses directly at the Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) level. This initiative is targeted to increase India’s storage capacity by 70 million tonnes.
- The Krishi Udan scheme facilitates the seamless, subsidized air transportation of agricultural products. It benefits farmers in the Northeast, hilly, and tribal regions by connecting their local produce to lucrative national and international markets.
- Land Fragmentation and Declining Operational Holding Size:
- The continuous division of ancestral land has led to extreme sub-division and fragmentation of farm property.
- According to the Agriculture Census 2015-16, small and marginal farmers (owning less than 2 hectares) constitute 86% of all operational holdings, yet they operate only 46.94% of the total cultivated area. The national average size of operational holdings has declined to just 1.08 Hectares.
- This micro-scale operation prevents farmers from achieving economies of scale, making the adoption of heavy farm mechanization (such as combine harvesters or tractors) economically unviable.
- Severe Groundwater Depletion and Irrigation Inefficiencies:
- Indian agriculture remains heavily reliant on unsustainable water extraction.
- According to the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) and NITI Aayog, agriculture accounts for nearly 85% to 90% of total groundwater extraction in India.
- Flood irrigation methods dominate, operating at a low water-use efficiency of only 30% to 40%. CGWB’s groundwater reports highlight that 20.7% of tested wells exceed safe nitrate contamination limits (>45 mg/L) due to runoff from over-irrigated fields.
- In the cereal bowls of Punjab and Haryana, subsidized power for deep tube-wells has caused groundwater tables to drop by 0.5 to 1 meter annually, pushing aquifers into the over-exploited category and causing severe aquifer salinization.
- Soil Nutrient Imbalance and Degradation of Arable Land:
- Distortions in fertilizer subsidies have led to severe soil degradation and nutrient mining.
- The ideal chemical application ratio for Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium (NPK) is 4:2:1, but heavy price subsidies on urea have skewed the national application average to roughly 10.9:4.1:1.
- Over-application of nitrogen causes soil acidification, destroys soil microflora, and lowers the crop response ratio (kilograms of grain produced per kilogram of fertilizer applied).
- Inadequate Post-Harvest Infrastructure and Supply Chain Losses:
- A severe shortfall in cold chain facilities, pack-houses, and assaying labs leads to massive physical and economic wastage of agricultural produce.
- Joint assessment studies by NABARD Consultancy Services (NABCONS) and ICAR-CIPHET estimate that India incurs an annual post-harvest loss of ₹1.53 lakh crore across major food crops and perishables.
- Perishable horticultural crops like tomatoes suffer severe post-harvest waste, losing 15% at the farm level and 12% in retail.
- In the tomato-growing hubs of Kolar (Karnataka) and Nashik (Maharashtra), the absence of localized controlled atmosphere (CA) storage forces farmers to dump produce during seasonal gluts when farmgate prices collapse.
- Asymmetric Market Power and Exploitative Intermediary Networks:
- Despite reform efforts, the producer share in consumer price remains extremely low—often ranging between 20% to 35% for fruits and vegetables.
- Rural farmers remain dependent on local APMC mandi traders and commission agents (Arhtiyas) who exercise cartel-like control over price bidding. High mandi taxes, arbitrary deductions for quality assay, and delayed payment settlements restrict transparent price discovery.
- E.g., during peak harvest cycles for onions in Lasalgaon (Maharashtra), cartels among wholesale buyers frequently depress farmgate prices to ₹2–₹3 per kg, while urban consumers in metro cities continue to pay ₹30–₹40 per kg, leaving the farmer with negative net returns.
- Persistent Rural Indebtedness and Dependence on Informal Credit:
- Financial vulnerability remains a primary cause of farm distress. According to the NSS 77th Round Survey (Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households), 2019, nearly 50% of agricultural households in rural India are indebted, carrying an average outstanding loan of ₹74,121.
- Smallholders without clear land titles struggle to meet bank documentation requirements, forcing them to rely on informal moneylenders who charge compound interest rates ranging from 24% to 36% per annum.
- Climate Vulnerability and High Dependence on Rainfed Farming:
- Over 51% of India’s net sown area lacks artificial irrigation and depends entirely on rainfed agriculture.
- The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) projects that unmitigated climate disruption could reduce wheat yields by 6% to 23% by 2050 due to rising temperatures.
- Heat stress during the terminal grain-filling stage and erratic rainfall patterns (such as short-duration monsoon Cloudbursts followed by long dry spells) severely lower crop productivity.
- E.g., the early onset of high temperatures in March 2022 resulted in an estimated 10%-35% reduction in crop yields in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. significantly reducing farm revenues.
- Feminization of Agriculture and Lack of Land Ownership Rights:
- While women constitute a massive share of the agricultural labor force, they face severe structural exclusion.
- The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) indicates that over 73% of rural female workers are engaged in agriculture, performing critical tasks like transplanting, weeding, and harvesting. However, women hold operational ownership of less than 14% of land holdings (Agri Census).
- Because formal institutional bank credit, government subsidies, and Kisan Credit Cards require land titles as primary proof, women farmers remain largely excluded from financial systems and extension support.
- Ashok Dalwai Committee (Focus:
- Doubling Farmers’ Income)
- Market & Policy Reforms: Recommended shifting agricultural marketing to the Concurrent List, rolling out model APMC rules, and boosting private investment in agri-logistics.
- Diversification & Productivity: Urged a shift from low-value traditional crops to high-value horticulture, floriculture, and allied sectors like dairy and fisheries.
- Supply Chain Upgrades: Emphasized building robust cold chains, rural warehouses, and food processing units to minimize post-harvest losses.
- Farmer Collectives: Pushed for strengthening Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) to improve farmers’ bargaining power and market access.
- Shanta Kumar Committee (Focus:
- FCI Restructuring & Food Management)
- Decentralized Procurement: Suggested that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) hand over grain procurement operations to states that already have strong infrastructure (e.g., Punjab, MP, Haryana).
- Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT): Recommended replacing physical grain distribution under the Public Distribution System (PDS) with cash transfers, starting in large cities and grain-surplus states.
- Rationalizing Food Security: Proposed reducing the coverage of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) from 67% to 40% of the population to target the genuinely needy and cut subsidy burdens.
- M.S. Swaminathan Committee (Focus:
- Comprehensive Farmer Welfare)
- MSP Formula (C2+50%): Strongly recommended that the Minimum Support Price (MSP) be set at least 50% higher than the comprehensive cost of production (C2).
- Land Reforms & Resource Access: Advised distributing ceiling-surplus and wastelands to the landless, and strictly preventing the diversion of prime agricultural land for non-farming, corporate use.
- Credit & Debt Relief: Recommended lowering crop loan interest rates to 4%, establishing an Agriculture Risk Fund for disaster relief, and expanding formal credit access, including Kisan Credit Cards for women.
- Legalization of Digital Land Leasing and ULPIN Integration:
- Enact state-level versions of the Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act to protect title rights while granting legal recognition to tenant farmers through the 14-digit Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN/Bhu-Aadhaar).
- This enables over informal tenant cultivators to directly access kisan credit cards (KCC), official crop insurance, and government disaster relief without producing traditional land ownership deeds. .
- Deployment of Climate-Resilient Biofortified Seeds and Sub-Surface Fertigation:
- Multiply and distribute the 109 climate-resilient and biofortified crop varieties developed by ICAR while pairing them with sub-surface drip fertigation systems.
- This root-zone nutrient delivery mechanism increases water-use efficiency to 90%, reduces fertilizer and water consumption, and insulates crop yields from thermal stress and erratic rainfall patterns.
- Monetizing Carbon Farming Practices on Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCM):
- Establish national carbon credit verification protocols for climate-smart practices like direct seeded rice (DSR) and alternate wetting and drying (AWD) in paddy fields.
- Also, enrolling smallholders in soil carbon sequestration initiatives reduces agricultural methane emissions.
- Farmgate Value Addition through Secondary Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF):
- Convert raw primary produce into semi-processed goods by setting up rural secondary agriculture clusters (solar drying, pulse milling, essential oil extraction, sorting, and grading) funded through the PM Formalisation Of Micro Food Processing Enterprises (PMFME) scheme and the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF).
- This processing can reduce post-harvest transit losses and increase farmer price realization by 20% to 35%.
- Direct B2C Market Linkages Via ONDC and FPO Aggregation:
- Onboard farmer producer organizations (FPOs) directly onto the open network for digital commerce (ONDC) to bypass traditional APMC commission agents.
- Aggregating smallholders enables bulk input procurement (lowering seed and fertilizer costs) and transfers rupee directly to the farmer by eliminating multiple intermediary markups.
- Controlled Environment Agriculture and Solarized Hydroponics:
- Promote controlled environment agriculture, including polyhouses, vertical farming, and solar-powered cold storage, in peri-urban corridors through targeted horticultural subsidies.
- These automated systems use less land and water while generating higher net yields per square meter, insulating high-value horticultural crops from climate shocks and price volatility.
- Transitioning Indian agriculture from a yield-centric system to an income-risk management framework is vital for rural prosperity. While technological initiatives like AgriStack and schemes like PM-KISAN have laid a solid foundation, overcoming deep-rooted structural bottlenecks, such as land fragmentation, groundwater depletion, and market distortions, requires concerted multi-sectoral reforms. Implementing digital land leasing, incentivizing carbon farming, and strengthening B2C supply chains via FPOs will empower smallholders, ensure climate resilience, and build a truly sustainable, high-value agricultural economy.