|
In the era of trade liberalization, all sectors including agriculture are undergoing several reforms. Some influential outcomes of trade liberalization are deregulation of domestic market and openings and expansion of world market. Changes in food policy, trends of High Value Food (HVF) are some of the potential outcomes of the liberalizations. The change in food consumption pattern raised high demand for value-added food, which ultimately led to change in the food production and distribution structure. This change has led to restructuring and expansion of the existing agro-industry especially in many developing countries, which in turn has led to increased control over the existing agricultural production process. With the increasing commercialization of agricultural and food systems worldwide, the food industry is increasingly dominated by large agribusiness firms. The supply chain is also reforming to cope with the consumers' demand. However, agriculture supply chains vary from country to country, depending on quality of the product, consumers' demand and existing marketing institutions. Research indicates that there are three ways of agricultural supply, which include direct purchase in the open market, vertical integration and contractual arrangements.
Post-independence period brought about many agrarian reforms, with green revolution being an important milestone, changing the position of the country from importer to exporter thus helping in attaining self-sufficiency. There have been fluctuations in the growth trend of agricultural sector when compared with the aggregate growth rate of economy. The major expectations to be fulfilled are maintaining a reasonable growth rate, providing food security to the millions below poverty line, contributing to the overall development scenario and being competitive in global trade. Though the performance of the agricultural sector during 1990s was satisfactory, there was no phenomenal growth. The reason for the increasing income gap between other sectors and farm sector lies in some of the policy interventions that have considerably neglected the farming community making the farming sector not so attractive. This has consequently resulted in the flux of the workforce involved in farming sector and when interviewed, about 40% farmers showed strong inclination to leave the sector if provided with any other alternative. The distress has resulted in falling trends in income and frustrations resulting in suicides in a few states. Government has been proved inefficient in these aspects. |
