Farmers are the backbone of India and they contribute hugely to the economy and contribute a significant percentage to India’s GDP growth. Let’s keep aside the economy and GDP growth. The food sources that we need on a daily basis, we can’t have without farmers. They are the sources for everything we get on a regular basis.
That’s how important farmers are for any country and in India, farmers have to be strong, both physically and financially so it’s very important for us to empower them. If you look at the farmer conditions in India, there are bottlenecks that are hindering their growth that we are going to address today in this blog. Stay tuned for the rest of the blog to learn more about what our farmers are going through and what can be fixed to empower them.
Lack of education
Many farmers in India are living in rural areas and they are not educated. Also, they don’t have access to educational resources which is what stops them from learning, as well as the language barrier as most of the quality content is available in English, and lack of internet knowledge makes it difficult for them to search/find something on the internet.
So even if there are tips and resources available, they don’t have access to them. That is hindering their growth. The government should facilitate or organize camps across the villages in India to educate them so that they don’t make mistakes and improve their farming, which in result, they will earn more and become stronger.
No use of technology
In today’s era, there are many agriculture startups in India that are helping farmers through its technology but many farmers are still unaware of that and they are just doing farming using traditional methods. That’s the reason why they are not scaling much; they could have done it if they had the technology.
Global warming
Because of global warming, the weather has changed quite a lot everywhere across different regions. The monsoon has shifted by like 15 to 20 days as compared to what it used to be some years back and also the amount of rain we were receiving earlier was more; now we are not receiving that much rainfall which is a cause of worry. And, that is impacting the crop health and it is becoming difficult for the farmers to do farming.
Natural Disasters
As global warming is on the rise, natural disasters have been common in India. Sometimes there is no rain somewhere but somewhere it is flooded, sometimes it’s a cyclone, somewhere it’s drought. These are destroying crops which is a big issue.
Farmers lack quality seeds
I have seen in my area that farmers don’t have access to quality seeds and that’s why their crops don’t grow as expected and they end up losing money and crops.
Why? Because of lack of education and technology, they are still using traditional methods and that is affecting their productivity, they are not able to scale up quickly, and they are not able to fix their issues quickly and that’s hampering their growth.
Water Scarcity
The farmers in India mostly rely upon monsoon rain. There are very few reservoirs or ponds in all the areas, as well as water supply is bad so it becomes difficult for them to use water for irrigation that is required.
Next is financial issues. Most farmers in India come from small family, mostly poor or middle-class families so they don’t own acres of land, as well as don’t have much backup to scale to a larger place which affect their growth.
Many take loans but sometimes they fail to repay because of crop damage or not getting enough price value and that creates an extra burden on them.
Price Fluctuation
There are always fluctuations in pricing throughout the year. Sometimes it’s good for farmers but sometimes causes heavy loss.
Soil Infertility
Nowadays farmers are using chemicals or fertilizers to help crops grow quickly as well as to prevent crops from insects. Yes, it helps but it is also degrading soil quality so lands are not like before, not growing crops as expected what it used to be earlier.
