Covid 19: Agriculture needs special support system

At a time when the rural economy was already under distress, Covid 19 pandemic is going to make things worse for the agriculture sector. Some short term support measures by the government can help it to sail through this difficult time.

In this pandemic situation, it seems that lockdown and social distancing are the only effective ways of dealing with the pandemic. However, its repercussions on thousands of rural and migrant workers are already visible. Regardless of support promises and efforts by the government to prevent them from moving out, majority of workers are not reporting for work with most migrant workers returning to their native places. While the government has exempted operation of agricultural mandis from the lockdown, however, in the absence of migrant labourers, harvesting of the rabi crops will be difficult especially in wheat surplus states Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

At a time when the rural economy was already witnessing declining agricultural incomes, this lockdown is only going to increase distress in agriculture sector further. The latest data shows that agricultural prices are declining in most markets. Owing to decrease in demand from hotels & restaurants and uncertainty over exports, prices of agricultural commodities such as perishable vegetables, grapes and sugar have fallen 15-20%. The all-India general CPI inflation declined to 5.91% in March 2020, compared with 6.58% in February 2020. Among the major CPI components, inflation of food and beverages declined to 7.82% in March from 9.45% in February 2020. Within the food items, the prices have declined for most vegetables, fruits, pulses, meat and fish and eggs.

In the short run, besides decline in agricultural prices, lockdown is going to disrupt the supply chains with little transportation facilities for marketing and selling farm produce. This is expected to hurt those who are especially engaged in production of perishables items like fruits and vegetables, which can’t be stored for a long time. In addition, labour involved in production of pulses, oilseeds and cotton which are labour intensive crops, are also going to witness fall in their incomes in harvest and post harvesting season.

With all the above mentioned problems, the solution lies in the concentrated government efforts. As the situation is not going to improve until vaccine comes, which is going to take at least one year, one way to tackle the problem is via a change in the cropping pattern. In the coming kharif season, farmers can shift their cropping pattern from labour intensive crops such as paddy to cotton or maize so that they are not impacted by shortage of labour. Another solution is to lure the workers from factories, construction, rikshaw-pullers and other areas who do not have any other work option right now to join the farm fields in this busy harvesting month. Attractive daily wage rate for farm operations can be offered so as to fill the gap between demand and supply of labour for agricultural activities.

In addition, rigorous marketing is important so that farmers realise remunerative prices for the harvested rabi crop. Given the task of maintaining social distancing, the issuing of coupons by governments to farmers for bringing their respective produce to mandis at given dates and times is reasonable. However, it is suggested that more needs to be done. Limiting the procurement of farm produce to mandis is not advisable. Government should start procuring wheat and other food items beyond mandis at village schools, rice mills, cooperative societies, panchayat offices and other unused public places during lockdown. This procurement can be practised at least for the foodgrains that do not require cold storage or reefer vehicles for subsequent movement to FCI godowns. Rabi harvest of Wheat and Chana, after all, only has to be unloaded, cleaned, weighed, and then stocked which can be done at any unused and easily approachable public place during lockdown. This will not only be cost and time saving but also serve the purpose of social distancing by preventing overcrowding at the mandis. Moving ahead, government should take advantage of this pandemic situation to bring reforms in APMC (agriculture produce and marketing committee) architecture to unshackle the existing marketing ecosystem to bring desired marketing reforms for the collective benefit of framers.

Going forward, to utilise agricultural production capacity to its fullest, government should strive reducing post-harvest losses of rabi crop by optimal post-harvest management strategies with modern methods of storage, handing and packaging of food items. Further, due attention has to be given on planning for kharif season where sowing of cotton and paddy crops will start from the month of June. The farmers will very soon queue up for buying seeds, fertilizers and other inputs for the next kharif crop sowing. The challenge lies ahead of government of managing crowds at agricultural inputs sale points. Health ministry can plan implementation of a systematic screening policy by testing the farmers and field workers, so that farm workforce is not a vector for the spread of the coronavirus.