New Delhi: A recent study has found that nearly 70% of surveyed marginal farmers across 20 Indian states are engaged in non-farm activities, mainly in wage labour and livestock to supplement their agricultural income.
The study was conducted by the Development Intelligence Unit of the Transforming Rural India Foundation and the data collecting unit Sambodhi.
The study surveyed 6,115 marginal farmer households from December 2022 to February 2023. It arrives at the conclusion that 84% of marginal farmers are, despite their conditions, the possibility of low profits and looming natural calamities, not willing to quit farming. They are also not interested in selling off their land to pursue other economic activities.
Over two-thirds, 68.29%, of the surveyed marginal farmer households are engaged in non- farm activities in order to be able to run their households, the report finds. The most popular is daily wage labour activities – especially road construction, house construction, MGNREGS work – in which 78% surveyed farmers are engaged. Farmers who doubled as daily wage labourers in the last one year earned an average revenue of Rs 100,275, the report says.
The second most important source of income is non-agricultural retail or wholesale businesses with 18.11% of farmers involved in it.
An additional 16.03% of marginal farmers work as tailors, masons, carpenters, drivers, electricians, artisans, etc. and other self-employed vocations. Some also have work which gives them a salary (11.7%) and others are involved in animal husbandry (11.8%), but these activities are less prominent in terms of their engagement, says the report.
“The number of households rearing livestock is found to be higher but their earnings from this activity are considerably low. This may explain why only a 10th of the farmers interviewed mentioned animal husbandry as an additional economic activity to supplement their income,” the report says.
The report estimates the median annual sales from farming at Rs. 40,000. 69% of marginal farmers had sold crops or by-products with an average annual sale at Rs 60,510.
The report notes that 85.4% farmers reported that their economic condition in the last 3 years has remained the same (48.3%) or better (34.7%) or much better (2.4%).
Government schemes
“While some of the sampled farmers are aware of government facilities for purchase of inputs, sale of produce to procurement centres/agencies and scheme of direct cash transfers, the level of utilisation of these facilities/programmes by them is very low,” the report says.
The report says that marginal farmers were mostly in the know of government schemes, with the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sammaan Nidhi (PM KISAN) Scheme emerging the most well known – 79.9% surveyed farmers knew of it.
There is, however, a big gap between knowledge of PM KISAN and other schemes like Kisan Credit Card (KCC) – which only 55% farmers know of – and Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), which only 48.9% know of.
The utilisation of PM KISAN was at 64.8%. However, only 25.4% who were aware of KCC availed themselves of it.
Only 51.5% of marginal farmers surveyed had availed themselves of state or Union government subsidies. The median annual subsidy is Rs. 6,000, the report finds.
The report notes as another key finding the revelation that 55.8% of marginal farmers have adopted various irrigation methods to cultivate their crops primarily with groundwater irrigation (75.9%), followed by canal or river irrigation (53.1%). Among those using groundwater, over 50% use electric pump sets while 45.64% use diesel pump sets. Solar pump sets are limited to only 4% of surveyed farmers.
The average area under irrigation is around 1.01 acres, which is slightly lower than the average area of land under cultivation.