PAU for compensation to farmers

Ludhiana's Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), in its observations on the draft national policy for farmers, has suggested including the social cost of production of depleting natural resources, loss of biodiversity and soil fatigue while calculating minimum support prices for various farm products.

It also suggested that the land and water use planning policy, based on national demand for different agricultural products, must also be framed keeping in mind resource endowment of different regions, comparative advantage of production and availability of infrastructure.

It also strongly supports the state government's demand for Rs 1,280 crore, as articulated by the Johl Committee, from the Centre, for diversification to compensate farmers for loss in income due to the switchover from rice to other crops.

"There is no justification for similar claims by other states because agricultural needs to be promoted only where it is required and also there is no economic justification for cultivating all crops in each state and region as it leads to inefficient use of resources," the committee stated.

PAU Vice-Chancellor Kirpal Singh Aulakh had constituted a Steering Committee to study the Jai Kisan Policy document. Later this year, the National Commission on Farmers, headed by Dr M S Swaminathan, plans to ask the government for adoption of the document by the nation on August 15, 2007, when India celebrates sixty years of independence.

The Steering Committee, guided by Dr Aulakh, found that the draft document was relevant to agriculture and rural development as it encompassed land and water use, agricultural technology biodiversity, marketing, post-harvest handling, value addition, capacity building etc. The idea behind the document was to focus on the problems of farming families.

PAU's Director of Research BS Dhillon in his note to Dr Swaminathan pointed out the need to accord priority to efficient and higher utilisation of the existing irrigation potential under major and medium projects.

Dhillon observed that agricultural bio-security was essential for livelihood of farmers and food and trade security of the nation. Therefore, the National Agricultural Bio-security system must be integrated with crop and income insurance programmes as well as early warning systems for threat estimates. In this context, PAU cautioned about impact of climatic changes, which may have serious implications on food and livelihood security. This requires continuous monitoring and vision and need for automatic weather stations across the country with on-line access. Such a system is required to estimate water resources position due to climatic changes, particularly, temperature and rainfall. This will help to decide crop and land use pattern in consonance with water resource availability.

PAU strongly advocated minimum support price and assured marketing in all areas to support dying crops and saving high value crops from price fluctuations. Farmers must be ensured remunerative prices for assured marketing of oil seed, pulses, fruits and vegetables.

On farmers' suicides, PAU quoted the draft policy which said that only 27 per cent farmers had access to institutional credit and the remaining 73 per cent farmers depended upon non-institutional sources like 'artiyas' the village private commission agents. PAU found 7 per cent rate of interest as fairly low rate. It apprehended that further reduction to 4 per cent, as suggested in the draft, may be difficult keeping in mind the transaction cost of around 2 per cent and about 35 per cent rate of default, seriously undermining the economic viability of these institutions. Also, farmers' access and flexibility for institutional loans was most important.

PAU supported single market in the country. Punjab amended its Agriculture Produce and Market Act allowing "private markets" in fruits and vegetables. However, no private market has developed in the state so far.

For public and private partnership and involvement of industry for developing demand driven technology and improving international competitiveness, it was essential to develop "lab-to-land-to-industry" programmes for post harvest technologies in value addition with appropriate mechanism for feedback from industry.