India’s agricultural economy and food security depend vitally on the small-holder farmers. In relation to their aggregate land-holding, the holdings smaller than 1.0 ha contribute proportionately more (Tables 3, 4, 6) to the national grains production than do the larger holdings. Despite this contribution, the small-holder families, who constitute about one-half of the national population, comprise almost three-fifths (Table 26) of the nation’s hungry and poor. As reasoned from Tables 1 and 2, it is socially beneficial to the nation that the number of small-holdings should continue to increase. It is therefore incumbent upon the nation to assist the small-holder families to increase their productivity and to augment their assets and entitlements.
Administrative assistance that might be afforded with relatively little legal complexity would be a liberalization of the land-lease market, relaxation of the constraints to inter-state movement of agricultural produce, and institutional support to new models of agricultural co-operatives.
In the medium- and the longer-term, India will need to negotiate within the World Trade Organization’s forums and procedures to ensure - perhaps through a “food-security-box” facility - that its small-holder agriculture is protected against unfair competition and against excessive fluctuations in international prices for commodities. Correspondingly, India’s small-holders shall need to be assisted to trade internationally to exploit their comparative advantages in producing herbal medicines and certified “organically-grown” foods.
Priorities for assistance to small-holders through technical supports and interventions are guided by the concerns that - notwithstanding that several effective programmes have generated increased on-farm productivity - crop and livestock yields, and productivity and sustainability of resource use, all remain low, and yield gaps in some regions remain high. Relatedly, it is cautionary to recall that India’s rates of increase in total factor productivity - notably for crops - were during the 1990s appreciably less than in preceding decades. This feature is authoritatively attributed to that last decade’s substantially lower investment in agriculture and in its supportive research/extension component. Thus, public- and private-sector involvements to optimize the prospective benefits from bio-technology, eco-technology, and informatics, and from integrated/packaged soil-water-irrigation-nutrient-pests management, and from a strengthened research-extension-farmer-market continuum, are likely to prove socially and economically rewarding.
Socio-economic interpretations (from Tables 19 and 21) indicate that ownership of land, however small, and/or a buffalo (and to a lesser extent, a cow) are associated with superior household income, nutrition, and food security. Similarly, Table 28 quantifies an association between head-of-household education and poverty. Table 27 indicates that, notwithstanding their increasing productivity, most of the families that operate holdings smaller than 0.5 ha, and many families with holdings of 0.5 - 1.0 ha, and perhaps all of the land-less-farm-labour families, are net purchasers of almost all food items. They correspondingly need cash wherewith to make those food purchases, and to augment their assets - including livestock, and to attain an adequate livelihood and to finance their children’s education.
These families’ options for earning such cash are to sell their unused labour, and/or (if owning land) to intensify, expand, or diversify their more-productive own-farm activities. Thus, in the national interests - including the interest that rural poverty should not be transformed into urban destitution - mechanisms that generate rural on-farm, off-farm, and on-off-farm employment, and that include a component of risk-management insurance to complement the Public Distribution System, should be promoted vigorously.
Additionally, rural investment - as in road, transport, water-impoundment, market, information, and communications infrastructures - is cost-effective; and notably so in non-irrigated areas. Correspondingly, rural development and rural-employment generation each require an investment in human resources and in skills strengthening, and in education and other social services. With upgraded infra-structures and strengthened human resources as an attractant, new enterprises and rural-finance agencies would expect to avail quickly of promising operational opportunities. It is thus here pertinent to reiterate that the cost of a rural workplace is substantially less than the cost of an urban workplace
