Horticulture Development Programme in Maharashtra - A boon to Small and Marginal Farmers

摘要

India, in the twenty-first century has emerged as a major economic power marked by rising per capita incomes and impressive performance in growth rates of gross domestic product. However, this remarkable achievement has not been confined to all sectors of the economy. During the Tenth Five Year Plan period, while the industry and service sector grew at a little more than 9 per cent per annum, that of the agricultural sector was a miniscule2.3 per cent per annum. Deceleration in growth rate in the agricultural sector is coupledby dominance of workforce in this sector with no major reduction over the decades. Theshare of agriculture and allied activities to gross domestic product is barely 14.6 percent (Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, 2010), which clearly speaks of dismally low productivity in this sector. A large number of factors are responsible for the underperformance and stagnation in this sector such as lack of protective irrigation, technology fatigue, declining public investment, etc. However, an important reason for unremunerative economic activity in this sector is the size of land holdings which are uneconomic. As per Agricultural census, 2005-06, (Government of India, unpublished data) 64.8 percent of farmers are marginal, occupying 20.2 percent of operated area, while18.5 percent are small farmers, cultivating 21 percent of land. Thus about 83.3 percentof the country's farmers are small and marginal, with the average size holding of marginal farmers being 0.38 hectare, while that of small farmers is 1.38 hectares.