Rapporteur's Report on Risks in Agriculture and Coping with Vulnerbailty: Including Vulnerbale or Disaster Prone Areas

摘要

Over half of the Indian population is engaged in the agriculture sector for its livelihood. Though agricultural sector witnessed changing of farming practices, a reasonably good growth in crop output, and decline in poverty; but these were actually confined to a few regions and benefitted only a few groups of farmers, thereby resulting in rising inequalities. A large number farmers suffer with three kinds of disadvantages, i.e., (a) economic disadvantages in terms of landlessness, near landlessness,small size of land holdings and market related uncertainties; (b) social disadvantages in terms of gender, caste and ethnicity and related access to opportunities; and (c) ecological and regional disadvantages, such as farmers located in arid, semi-arid,rainfed, disaster-prone, poorly irrigated or geographically remote and inaccessible areas. Related to such disadvantages, farmers in India deal with a significant amount of risks and uncertainties every year, which are numerous and diverse. These sources range from events related to climate and weather conditions to animal diseases; from commodity prices to changes in input prices; from technological risks to human risks; and from financial uncertainties to policy and regulatory risks. In recent years,risks related to climate change, frequent droughts and consequent crop failures have added to the woes of farmers. There is a little research about the full wallop of droughts as well as disasters on agriculture and its allied sub-sectors- crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry.