The history of Agriculture in India dates back to Indus Valley Civilization and even before that in some places of Southern India. India ranks second worldwide in farm outputs. As per 2018, agriculture employed more than 50℅ of the Indian work force and contributed 17–18% to country’s GDP.
In 2016, agriculture and allied sectors like animal husbandry, forestry and fisheries accounted for 15.4% of the GDP (gross domestic product) with about 31% of the workforce in 2014. India ranks first in the world with highest net cropped area followed by US and China. The economic contribution of agriculture to India’s GDP is steadily declining with the country’s broad-based economic growth. Still, agriculture is demographically the broadest economic sector and plays a significant role in the overall socio-economic fabric of India.
India exported $38 billion worth of agricultural products in 2013, making it the seventh largest agricultural exporter worldwide and the sixth largest net exporter. Most of its agriculture exports serve developing and least developed nations. Indian agricultural/horticultural and processed foods are exported to more than 120 countries.
As per one of the survey In India every year approximately 12000 farmer commit suicides. Though we are the youngest nation sill we are not able to support our farmers.
Problems faced by the industry are as follows
- Infrastructure: poor rural roads affecting timely supply of inputs and timely transfer of outputs from Indian farms
- Productivity: the productivity of its farms is below that of Brazil, the United States. If we work on productivity farmers yield would also improve.
- Farmers Suicides: Farmer suicides account for 11.2% of all suicides in India.
- Marketing: Agro marketing is poorly developed in India
- Diversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purpose: prime farmland must be conserved for agriculture except under exceptional circumstances, provided that the agencies that are provided with agricultural land for non-agricultural projects.
- Lack of Skills: Adoption of modern agricultural practices and use of technology is inadequate in comparison with Green Revolution methods and technologies, hampered by ignorance of such practices, high costs and impracticality in the case of small land holdings.
We at Sarathi would like to address the above issues & take head on with the issues. Our approach would include the following
- Making farmers of the country Agriculture entrepreneurs through Market Information.
- Achieving rapid growth in the Agriculture sector through intensive skill development.
- End to end approach on skilling and linking all the stakeholders of Agriculture Value Chain.
- Creating more non-agricultural jobs (Agriculture Allied Activities).
- Linking the farm labour with wage related employment in Agriculture sector, during non farming months.
