Our Prime Minister’s call to double the farmers’s income1 by 2022 is an opportune call as the growth in farmers’ income has stagnated and it caused significant distress to farmers. Doubling the farmers’ income by 2020, if it is achieved, would be a remarkable achievement as it had not been achieved in last 3 decades. The challenge is more steep when it comes to doubling the income of farmers who have less than 10 acres of agricultural land2.

Most of our small and marginal farmers are predominantly engaged in the cultivation of food grains. Almost 38 percent of the total cropped area is used for cultivating rice and wheat. Unfortunately, our per hectare yield for these two crops is quite low. Our rice yield is 3721 kgs/ha and wheat yield is 3177 kgs/ha. China has rice yield of 6775 kgs/ha and wheat yield 4987 kgs/ha. The practice of cultivating food grains using traditional methods in small land holdings is often one of the main reasons of low farm income.

NITI Aayog has listed many interventions and given a strategic direction at macro level to transform agriculture sector and reach the goal of doubling the farmers’ income. However, interventions at micro-level with community/farmers participation need to be promoted to achieve this goal for small and marginal farmers.

A couple of weeks back, a visit to a tribal village in Jharkhand showcased us brilliant examples of community engagement, micro-planning and dedicated focus that achieved the goal of doubling the farmers’ income in less 3 years. Tata Trusts in partnership with local NGO partners has transformed the agriculture practices of many tribal villages in Jharkhand.

The villages, we visited were 15-20 kms from Khunti, some yet to get functional road connectivity, electricity and proper mobile network coverage. Villagers (almost all from Munda tribe) have been engaged in the their traditional agriculture and lac cultivation for their livelihood, and had very low income from their fields. The per household income ranged from INR 20-40K per year. But in last 2-3 years, most of the households in these villages have doubled their income by changing their agriculture practices and establishing market linkages to get better value for the crop.

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A farmer taking care of his tomato crop

Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CINI), a Tata Trust supported initiative, worked extensively on understanding the cropping pattern, village resources, agriculture practices and the overall infrastructural challenges of each village/cluster.The intervention design and strategy leveraged the local knowledge, and practices and community leaders. The key feature of these interventions that worked as per my understanding are the following and provide some good learning for similar projects.

a) Income Diversification- Providing at least three sources of income to each households-Apart from agriculture, lac cultivation or sericulture, and rearing of pigs were promoted for additional sources of income.

b) Transition from diverse low value crops to selected high value crops-Making a large number of farmers to switch from their traditional crop to a particular high value crop is not easy. But to achieve a viable scale and marketable volume it is essential. In Khunti cluster, the selected crop is a high yielding variety of tomatoes which has a ready market in Jharkhand and Bihar. The intense community mobilization make it possible that a large number of farmers agreed to adopt a particular crop and suggested agriculture techniques.

c) Providing market linkages by aggregating farmers' produce- Aggregation of produce and planned harvesting ensured that intermediaries and vendors started procuring from these villages for the first time.

d) Community Engagement and Participation- Local resource persons, recruited from village, were given responsibility to ensure that all farmers are following the prescribed schedule for agriculture operations. All key activities, milestones were recorded. Local resource persons and the community leader made it sure that interventions implemented as per their design.

  1. Here the assumption is to double the farmers’ real income (adjusted using the Consumer Price Index) and not the nominal income. ?
  2. Chand, Ramesh, Raka Saxena, and Simmi Rana. "Estimates and Analysis of Farm Income in India, 1983-84 to 2011-12." Economic and Political Weekly 50.22 (2015): 139-145.APA ?