Measures to Increase Agriculture Productivity

Measures to Increase Agriculture Productivity

Low productivity of agriculture sector shows backwardness of agriculture sector. Agriculture sector needs improvement as it is a main occupation and very important pillar of Indian economy. In addition that, if agricultural productivity increases than income of rural economy will increase and It will also give solution of employment, urbanisation, migration and inequality of income. To increase agriculture productivity following steps should be taken:

Institutional Measures

Technological Measures

Other Measures

• Institutional Measures

To increase agricultural productivity economic planning has undertaken institutional reforms, which would be favourable for economic progress of agriculture.

(1) Abolition of zamindari system:

          In India in Bengal and other parts, zamindari system prevailed. The government collected taxes and land revenues from the property owners. Property owners collected revenues as rents from farmers or tenants. As the demand for land increased, the property owners began o collect more revenues from the farmers. Thus, they were exploited. Moreover, the property owners removed the tenants as they wished. Therefore, the farmers were not much interested in improvement of agriculture or farming. Thus, zamindari was necessary to be removed.

          During planning, the law of removal of zamindari system came into existence. The act has been passed through permanent with amendment in constitution. About two crore arms workers are now directly in touch with the government.

(2) Land reforms:

          In India, we find grant disparity in the ownership of land in the agriculture sector. Due to false and defective method of land ownership, those who actually cultivated land had no interest. In fact, the owners of the land and the farmers who cultivated land were different because the property owner leased his land to other farmers. The tenant who acquired the land on lease paid 50% or more of the produce of the land as rent. Farm-workers had no right regarding the land whatsoever. Therefore, they did not invest much in agriculture. To avoid his situation, land reforms were introduced. Let us get explanation regarding each of them in details.

(i) Tendency Act:

          To stop exploitation of farm workers, the laws have been made. In all these laws, the farmers were given lease of land with reasonable and equitable conditions. They could not be removed at the free will of the property owners. The farm workers were given right of cultivation and right of ownership by laws. The farmers began to cultivate land with interest and without any worries. This change became a vital booster for agriculture development.

(ii) Land Ceiling Act:

          To remove disparity regarding the ownership of land ceiling act was passed in which the ceiling of the land ownership was fixed. Those who possessed more land than fixed but laws were taken over but the government and this land was distributed among landless farmers.

          In this context, the efforts of Acharya Vinoba Bhave through ‘Bhoodan Movement’ are worth mention. He traveled on foot to breadth and width of the country and from the landowners as donations. Due to certain practical difficulties, expected results could not be achieved.

(3) Agriculture Credit (advances):

          Agricultural credits are provided by two sectors: (i) unorganised sector and (ii) Organised sector. In unorganised sector, moneylenders, merchants, landlords and relatives give advances and loan in unorganized sector, the rate of interest very high. In unorganized sector conditions like land mortgage are included. Due such condition, formers were fall in debt. They could not come out of it.

          In organized sector, co-operatives banks, co-operatives societies, land development and commercial banks give loans and advances. The rate of interest is lower. Farmers need short-term, medium term and long-terms advances. To satisfy the needs of the advances for the farmers, NABARD (National bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) has been setup. National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) which is body of RBI set up in 1982 to do special focus on agriculture sector and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and Land Development Banks (LDBs) developed under it to provide cheap and enough credit to Indian farmers. So that, they would have cheap and enough credit in order to increase agriculture productivity.

(4) Improvement in Structure of Agriculture Marketing : To overcome the shortcomings of the system of agriculture marketing many important steps have been taken :

• Regulated markets have been set up.
• To classify the agriculture produce as per their quality “AGMARK” (Agriculture Marketing) has been introduced.
• National warehouse corporation and state warehouse corporation started to increase agricultural produce of farmers.
• Systems have been developed to provide information about prices of agriculture produce.
• To protect farmers from market price changes, bottom price being announced by government.

(5) Agriculture sale:

          In India, the sale system of agricultural produces to defective and in efficient. Farmers have no proper facilities of transport and storing goods. They are forced to sell their goods at the wrong time. The farmers often had to borrow money from landlords, their saleable parts is quite little, and they are forced to sell them at lower prices. Farmers do not get reasonable prices due to innumerable mediators. Therefore, it was necessary to takes steps to strengthen the system of agricultural sale and make it efficient.

• Technological Measures

Compared to institutional measures, technological measures are more easy and fast to give benefits. Therefore, these changes have more importance in agriculture developmental strategies. They are as follows :

(1) Improved Seeds : Improved seeds (Hybrid seeds) are developed by scientific inventions. These scientifically developed seeds give more production helps in producing crops speedily and protect crop against diseases. India has achieved a notable rise in food grain production with the help of these type of seeds. Therefore, extra ordinary rise in food grains production is known at the place of agriculture revolution, ‘as seed revolution’. National agriculture research committee, National seed corporation and agriculture universities give priority to seed development to increase agriculture productivity in reality.

(2) Use of Chemical Based Fertilizers : Use of chemical fertilizer increased with the use of improved seeds in India. Chemical based fertilisers give enough nutrition to plant and helps it to grow rapidly. Therefore, these fertilisers are very beneficial to increase agriculture productivity. Nitrogen, phosphate, potash and other chemicals used as per crop. Chemical based fertilisers produced by public sector enterprises are also used India. Even fertilisers are imported and distributed at lower rates (subsidy rates)

(3) Increase in Irrigation Facility : Indian agriculture sector depend on sky (for rain purpose) in majority cases but rain is quite uncertain. So it directly affects agricultural production and productivity. India has one of the big issues of agriculture which is inadequate facility of irrigation. If agriculture has to come out from uncertainly of rain and to provide certainty in irrigation facility, then different motive of small scale and of medium scale irrigation projects should be developed. To expand the service of irrigation ‘Development program of irrigation sector’ and ‘Infrastructural development fund’ set up by India. In addition to that incomplete irrigation projects and to develop other facilities NABARD being assigned.

(4) Use of Machines : One of the reasons for low productivity of agriculture is traditional equipment or machines. In reality, with the development of engineering and automobile sectors Tractor, Trailer, Thresher, Electric pump set, Oil engine, Pesticide sprinkler pump, etc. modern machineries are invented. These machines are very helpful to have more than one crop a year which increases productivity.

(5) Pesticides : Ready crop has danger of various diseases and insects. To prevent crop from various diseases and to protect plants from insects scientifically develop pesticides are very useful. By using them, the loss of crop can be restricted which also will give high productivity.

Soil Testing : Soil testing is much popular in cultivation with the help of scientific techniques. That tests give information about land, it means, it is land favourable to crop or not can be known by tests. Even it gives information of deficiency of elements of soil. That helps to remove deficiency of land.

Other Measures :

   To improve agriculture productivity farmers are needed to educate or they may be well inform about new techology to bring changes in their working pattern. Even they should awakened for bad customs of rural areas and can be explained about, not to believe in fatalism. New measures like agriculture fair can be used to increase agriculture productivity.

In addition to that, agriculture allied activities like cattle rearing, poultry farming, food processing, jungle and others can be used to reduce dependency of agriculture. That can increase agriculture productivity. If small scale industries can be expanded to rural areas, that kind of industries can become supporting to agriculture and that can make improvement of agriculture productivity easier and possible in reality.