Scenario Of Indian Agriculture

India is the seventh largest country in geographical level and second largest country in population wise and twelfth largest country in economic wise .The economy of India is as diverse as it is large, with a number of major sectors including manufacturing industries, agriculture, textiles and handicrafts, and services. Agriculture is a major component of the Indian economy, More than 75 % of our people have their live hood as agriculture and agriculture oriented works. Mahatma Gandhi said "Indian economy lives in rural villages", and many of the industries getting their raw material from agriculture sector.
Indian agriculture began by 9000 BCE as a result of early cultivation of plants, and domestication of crops and animals. Settled life soon followed with implements and techniques being developed for agriculture. Indian agricultural products are traded around the world via existing trading networks and foreign crops were introduced to India.
The five plans are give importance to the agriculture sector and rural development and rural people's employment.Land and water management systems were developed with an aim of providing uniform growth. Our agriculture sector achived green reveloution during 1970s after that we create white revolution in milk production.Despite some stagnation during the later modern era the policy makers was not concentrate the development of comprehensive agricultural program and rural development compare to urban development and industrial development. Nearly 21.1% of the entire rural population of India exists in difficult physical and financial predicament. But rate of poverty in urban population is 15%. In general, the Government controls the Indian economy, and there remains a great disparity between the rich and the poor.
However, the service sector is greatly expanding and has started to assume an increasingly important role. The fact that the English speaking population in India is growing by the day means that India has become a hub of outsourcing activities for some of the major economies of the world including the United Kingdom and the United States. Outsourcing to India has been primarily in the areas of technical support and customer services. Other areas where India is expected to make progress include manufacturing, construction of ships, pharmaceuticals, aviation, biotechnology, tourism, nanotechnology, retailing and telecommunications. Growth rates in these sectors are expected to increase dramatically. But the other side the slowdown in agricultural growth has become a major cause for concern. India's rice yields are one-third of China's and about half of those in Vietnam and Indonesia.
Due to urbanization and industrialization use of agriculture land is reduced during the last one decade agriculture lands are converted in to residential houses and factories hence the number of agriculture labors lost their work and move to urban areas. This leads to low out put in agricultural products, insufficiency and rise in food articles prices. Number of surveys said that the world will go to face food insufficiency in near future.
In India Maximum of landholders are fall under the category of Small farmers, so they are not able to meet out the increasing input cost and not able to introduce any new technological machineries in their farms, due to this reason our "farmers are born in debt, live in debt and died in debt".
Infrastructure is also a significant factor in the process of development but country like our rural India has not posses the infrastructure such as roads, electricity, fertilizer and pesticides availability which caused the vulnerable damage to the growth of agriculture. While India has a wide network of rural finance institutions, many of the rural poor remain excluded, due to inefficiencies in the formal finance institutions, the weak regulatory framework, high transaction costs, and risks associated with lending to agriculture.
Farmers' access to markets is hampered by poor roads, rudimentary market infrastructure, excessive regulation and middlemen intervention in selling the products is very big problem in marketing the products. Hence the Indian farmers need easily accessible and highly structured markets with out middleman interventions.
Indian agriculture policy allow some foreign companies to introduce Dangerous genetic engineering technologies in seeds (GMS) and shift towards food grains to cash crops it may helpful to the farmers in one way in initial periods but using this type of GMS and shift our production system from food grains to cash crops in future we will loose our traditional seeds. Now we are seriously talking about fuel and its importance hereafter there is serious arguments and problem will come for "food or fuel". An estimated 100 million tonnes of grain per year are being redirected from food to fuel. (Total worldwide grain production for 2007 was just over 2000 million tonnes. As farmers devoted larger parts of their crops to fuel production than in previous years, land and resources available for food production were reduced correspondingly. This has resulted in less food available for human consumption,
Irrigation is key to agricultural production. Irrigation facilities are inadequate, as revealed by the fact that only 52.6% of the land was irrigated in 2003-04, which result in farmers still being dependent on rainfall, specifically the monsoon season. A good monsoon results in a robust growth for the economy as a whole, while a poor monsoon leads to a sluggish growth. The government must allocate funds to start the new irrigation projects to increase the cultivation.
Agricultural reforms and increased private investment is must, especially small farmers. Create a viable model of public-private partnership that allows private investors to invest in agriculture infrastructure in partnership with banks and financial institutions. This will help the farmers to access the high quality technologies and increase the output with international standards to meet the global market requirements.
The policy makers in India have a high responsibility on reducing poverty by raising agricultural productivity and developing the rural population economic status from deprived condition. However, bold action from policymakers will be required to shift away from the existing subsidy-based regime that is no longer sustainable, to build a solid foundation for a highly productive, internationally competitive, and diversified agricultural sector.
The government should instruct to the all universities, colleges, private and Government offices and manufacturing industry canteens to sell agricultural products like tender coconut, cucumber, watermelon, fruits etc, to enhance and promote the agricultural products in these areas it will help the formers to get good demand and price for their products.
We need more number of Agriculture universities and agriculture colleges in India to promote research and development in this area because majority of the population depending this sector for their live hood. So the government should concentrate and give more importance to the research and developments in rural and agricultural sector.
Population of India as well as total population of the world has rabidly increasing There is no queson that improving standards of living for the current poor of the world, plus providing for the billions still to come, will increase global demand for food and levels of per capita consumption are so high. But the rate of food grain growth is substantially slower than the average population growth rate. Worldwide about two billion people are lack food security and 825 million people are chronically malnourished, according to a recent estimate by UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Hence the very urgent need is the policy makers and government should take responsible steps to improve the agricultural sector and eradicate poverty and food starvation in the world.