Though India is a leading producer of several food items, a majority
of Indian farmers, especially the small and marginal ones,
continue to be economically backward. The horticulture sector,
where small holding size farms are common, is ideally suited for
contract farming which would be mutually beneficial to both the
farmers and agribusiness
Agriculture is one of the most important
sectors of the Indian economy,
accounting for about 25% of the national
GDP (industry 26% and service
sector 49%). The post green revolution
has seen India emerge as a leading
food producer in the world. The
focus of the green revolution was primarily
on food grains. With a production
level of over 210 million tones in
2002, India has emerged as the largest
rice producer and the second largest
wheat producer in the world. Considerable
strides have also been made
in other areas of food production like
the dairy industry, poultry and live-stock and horticulture. While India
ranks first in milk production, it is the
fourth largest egg producer and ranks
eighth in broiler production. The
wide variety of agro-climatic conditions
have helped India produce a
large variety of horticultural products
and India ranks second to Brazil and
China in fruits and vegetables production
respectively.
In spite of the impressive production
figures, a vast multitude of Indian
farmers, mainly in the small and marginal
category, continue to be economically
backward. The small and
marginal farmers are increasingly
finding it difficult to make their farm-ing venture commercially viable.
They also find it difficult to establish
links with the marketing system. The
land ceiling legislation in post independence
India restricted farm size to
family owned small farms. Over the
years, the number of farms have further
increased, while the average size
of the farm holding is gradually
shrinking. In the mid-nineties, there
were 115 million (97.7 million in
1985-86) farm households with an
average farm size of 1.5 hectares or
less. Table 1 shows the predominance
of small and marginal farmers
in the landholding distribution in
India.
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