Dr. Parveen Kumar, Dr. Anil Kumar
Indian agriculture is still characterised by the subsistence farming where the income of the farmer is just sufficient to meet the requirements of their family. This is mainly because of the small size of their farms. It is here pertinent to mention that more than ninety per cent of the farmers in the country are marginal and small with land holding size less than 2 hectares. Such small land holdings are also fragmented and thus become an obstacle in farm mechanisation and improvement efforts and hence require more labour, time efforts and money. Although the share of agriculture to the GDP of the country has decreased over the years; yet about 66.2 per cent of the rural males and 81.6 per cent of the rural females are engaged in agriculture as cultivators or labourers. Therefore there is an urgent need to transform agriculture from subsistence to commercial one so that the farming community can earn a decent living and lead a dignified life. Now greater stress is being laid on commercialisation. Commercialisation of agriculture is a phenomenon where agriculture is governed by commercial consideration i. e certain specialised crops are to be grown not for consumption in village but for sale in national and even in international market. This in turn has the advantage of increasing their income.
The history of commercialisation of agriculture can be traced back to the British period. It started during British rule in India post 1813 when the Industrial revolution in England gained pace and commercialisation became more prominent around 1860 AD during American Civil War. The American civil war boosted demand of Cotton from India to Britain. But that commercialization did not take place to feed Indian industries but primarily to feed the British industries. It was taken up and achieved only in cases of those agricultural products which were either needed by British Industries or could fetch cash commercial gain to the British in the European or American market. Several efforts were made to increase the production of cotton in the country as it was needed by the British cotton textile Industries. Similarly Jute also received greater attention during the British regime as the jute made products used to get a ready market in the America and Europe.
However in India, in the latter half of the 19th century agriculture sector witnessed the commercialisation of its agriculture sector. There were certain factors responsible for commercialisation of Indian agriculture. Some of them were the spread of money economy, the competition both from within and from the global world, the systems of contract, the growth of internal and external trade, the emergence of a unified national market and the economics involved in the production of food grains.
As almost majority of the peasant class is still beyond the outreach of a formal institutional financial framework and have to depend on the private landlords and the moneylenders for all their farming needs. They in turn charged huge interests from them. This also forced the farmers to find alternate ways to increase their income from their farms and ultimately they had to go the commercialisation way. Also introduction of new technologies have also increased farm productivity and also the cash requirements of farmers has increased on account of the use of fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides etc. Agriculture needs to be commercialised to make it profitable so that it can attract young minds by becoming more remunerative.
The emergence of the commercialisation in the Indian agriculture is the marked feature as so far the agriculture had been away from the business enterprise. Now agriculture started to be influenced by the commercial consideration. Under the commercialisation of agriculture, certain specialised crops are now grown for sale in the national and even in the international markets. Commercial crops like cotton, jute, groundnut, oilseed, sugarcane, tobacco, etc which are more remunerative than food grains grown. Some other crops like condiments, spices, fruits and vegetables also are raised for commercial purpose. Infact, it is believed that commercialisation reached in its highest level of developments in the plantation industry i.e. tea, coffee, rubber etc, which were produced for selling in the international market. The plantation sector comprises of rubber, tea, coffee and cardamom; a highly cash rich segment in the agriculture sector. The state of Kerala accounts for 45 per cent of the total area under plantation crops and it is one of the few states in India where all the four plantation crops are raised in sizable quantities.
Commercialisation also results in commercial viability because only a commercial venture is economically viable and socially sustainable. Commercialisation forms a part of the three dimensional approach to make agriculture a profitable enterprise. The first approach is ensuring a remunerative price of the farm produce and second being the marketability of the produce. Commercialisation of agriculture can acts as catalyst in increasing agricultural productivity. It in fact did not happened in the country at the pace it was required to be due to poor agricultural organisation, obsolete technology and lack of resources among most peasants. It was only the rich farmers who benefitted and these in turn accentuated inequalities of income in the rural society. The poor farmer is still forced to sell the produce just after harvest at whatever prices he could get as he had to meet in time the demands of the government, the landlord, the money lender and his family needs. It can link India with world economy and creation of a base for growth of national economy. Commercialisation of agriculture leads to growth of national agriculture and agriculture problems acquiring a national form thus demanding a national level importance.
For commercialisation we have also to increase the level of food processing and value addition. Presently the level of processing of fruits and vegetables in the country is only two per cent compared to eighty per cent in USA and Malaysia, seventy eight per cent in Philippines and seventy per cent in Brazil and France. Food processing sector is a very important one as the total food grain production is expected to be double in next ten years. Hence food processing and value addition are at the heart of commercialisation process.
Commercialisation of Indian agriculture has all the potential to increase famers’ income and creating more employment opportunities. With more and more farmers making commercialisation as a way of farming, the farmers can raise their income by processing and value addition, selling their produce at reasonable rates in the market. However, it has to be taken care of that the linking of the agriculture sector to the world market and the price movements and business fluctuations in the world markets do not affect negatively the fortunes of the Indian farmer.
(The authors are from Advanced Centre for Rainfed Agriculture (ACRA), SKUAST-J; can be reached at pkumar6674@gmail.com)