Look beyond the ‘annadata’ and see the progressive, ‘anna-udyemi’.

In 2022, it’s time to recognize that there is a growing volume of progressive farmers who have left behind the ‘annadata’ narrative, and are enthusiastic economic agents in an aspirational, growing and high-potential agri-sector. This ‘anna-udyemi’ is an integral part of the country’s productive economy, and needs to be celebrated as a food-entrepreneur.

You cannot open any Newspaper or magazine today and not find at least one article that illustrates how a progressive farmer (and very often a woman too!) has made a reasonable profit by applying themselves to a market-linked horticulture crop, or diary or honey or inland fisheries business. These stories are not rare anymore…they are the substance of much discussion and inspiration across the country. And yet, we have been held to high ransom in the last two years, by this imagery of the poor farmer who needs political Godfathers and violent mobs for support.

When I started my journey in farming, I invested into establishing an action research project that would dive into the ‘enterprise’ issues of agriculture. The questions were simple: Why is it so difficult to earn a living in small-scale farming in India; what are potential scalable solutions; what constraints and opportunities need innovations; who are the stakeholders that need to be brought along.

Seven years after initiating this exercise and doing several experiments on field, I like to believe that this has been akin to time invested in a PhD. A deep dive into this complex subject, done as a self-funded, hands-on, practitioner-based doctoral study, instead of just an academic pursuit of knowledge.

Our small farm is now evolving into a sustainable agro-ecological unit, with integrated sections of forest, timber, field crops, fodder, cash crop plantations and nurseries. We are a 100% natural farm and have integrated simple post-harvest processing with solar drying and powdering. With a focus on 3–4 main market-linked crops and a bio-diverse ecology, we are on the path to sustainable revenues.

Over these last few years I have not only developed a deep love for the practice of farming and the simple joys of farm life, but also gained learning, like many others who are applying themselves to agriculture allied enterprises. And I hope that this could be useful to others who have an interest in going back to farming. As we look forward to Budget 2022, I make a case for some specific ideas, based on four key insight areas from my learning so far, in the context of India’s agriculture challenges and its future stakeholders:

1. Recognise the Changing Mindset: The ‘Annadaata’ paradigm as a description of all small holding farmers is well past it’s end date. It is time to recognise that there are also millions of small farmers who are already on an aspirational journey to be entrepreneurs, they represent a productive ‘anna-udyemi’, food-entrepreneurs with the potential to increase their own and the village income significantly through agri-enterprise. With a larger proportion of small holding farmers in India, we are deeply embedded in this annadata mindset and the growing enterprise value of agriculture effort is being lost in translation. Like any other professional services enterprise, a Farmer/ Land Manager uses the resources at his hand, to produce something that has a clear demand and earns a return for the productive use of resources at his disposal. But the Annadaata paradigm keeps him locked in aid, bad loans and social support, whereas, like any other professional services enterprise, he has the right to working capital loans, free markets, fair prices, and a return on his investments. This means that every farmer needs to first understand the full potential of the resources available to him and diversify his output to maximize the returns. Horticulture & animal husbandry farmers have understood this instinctively, so have farmers who are invested in inland fisheries and apiaries, and that is what is pushing the growth of our horticulture/ floriculture/ dairy/ aqua and apiary production significantly. Inspite of the Pandemic, the horticulture sector saw a 2.93% increase in production in 2021, one of its best years so far. Additionally, leveraging land holdings for services like training/ farm stays/ rural tourism are seeing increasing adoption, and contributing to additional farm income. The modern ‘anna-udyemi’ understands his/ her resources and finds ways to maximize them, like any professional enterprise. It’s time to recognise farm incomes from produce and services, give it a tax threshold and encourage progressive farmers to get competitive loans based on demonstrated, transparent annual farm incomes.
2. Soil Health is the key metric to track: A 21st century Farmer needs to first and foremost be recognised as a Soil & Land Manager. Linking agriculture entirely with food volume & production has exploited arable land packets immeasurably. Agriculture is a complex composite of land management, water management, agro-ecological development, and market-linked production. It is now clear, with hundreds of studies in this field, that it is impossible to reverse climate change and create sustainable, nutritious food production for humans, without a return to the first principles of farming, which is Soil Nutrition. Can we further incentivise the soil health card, with a special focus on the percentage of organic matter in the farmer’s field? India is lucky in having a history of Natural or Prakritik Kheti principles and this is the time to get back to those principles. A movement towards this is already initiated at reasonable scale with the Niti Aayog presenting its report on the science behind natural farming and its push for adoption. As per some reports, India now has over 2.5 million farmers following this methodology. But it could be mainstreamed in this decade if we can turn around more farmer practitioners to a soil based, non-chemical approach to farming. My suggestion, make the Organic Carbon percentage in soil a part of the land records, linked to each land holding and its benefits. Like a test for haemoglobin indicates a range of health parameters for women, Organic Matter percentage needs to get into regular usage and testing for Mother Earth.
3. New Talent is already emerging, let’s make this inclusive: Farming, for this new climate change world, needs an influx of new talent and energy. As traditional farming families migrate to cities or resign to old mindsets, we need to encourage the influx of young farmers, urban farmers, new-gen family farms, and a return of young and old professionals back to their family land and farming. While we enhance the curricula at agriculture colleges, what we also need is easy access to farming opportunities, without the huge costs of land acquisition. How do we create a large pool of new practitioners in the field? A suggestion is to create an urban policy for ‘Allotment Farming’ in India. Take empty urban spaces, empty plots, areas near the periphery of big cities, around communities, within schools, hospitals and on terraces, and incentivize City Administrations and citizen groups to put it on rent for urban famers who are willing to till and grow and make produce for local consumption. There is great interest in farming among urban residents, home makers and professionals, but huge land costs and having to go miles outside the city to run a farm makes it impossible for most. In 10 years, we could have created a worthy pool of modern organic farm practitioners by just opening up a wasted resource within cities.
4. Post-harvest/ post-production enterprise: Finally, the successful productivity of agriculture is a combination of raw material production AND its processing into usable products. Let’s find and celebrate the successes of such enterprise. Just raw material production cannot double farm incomes. It is critical that farmer enterprises adopt processing technology at the farm. Small farms need to explore low-cost tech that could take them up the value chain. Drying, milling, pulping, extracting oil, de-seeding, freezing, powdering etc. A variety of tech solutions in the country now make this possible to explore, even fro small farms. Or better still, farmers could come together in producer companies to build shared infrastructure & access shared growth. For example, the Farmers linked to the Sahyadri Producer Company for example, have demonstrated this significant mindset shift — they are India’s largest exporter of fresh grapes, they pulp their own tomato puree, package their own raisins, quick freeze fruit pieces, run a consumer brand, and are co-owned by close to 8000 farmers who share the production, post-production, and profit of this collective agri-enterprise. A suggestion is to fund the writing of detailed cases, vlogs and media of such integrated agriculture successes, and mainstream them through the curriculum at schools, colleges and business management institutes. A concious effort needs to be made to move away from the annadata narrative, and build a deep appreciation of the ‘anna-udyemi’, not only in the farming community, but also in its future stakeholders.

For India to take full advantage of its agriculture potential, this enterprise thinking needs to take hold quickly, and be given enough support, combined with a deep investment in building the farmer’s skill in land management and soil health. We have lost significant momentum by the unfortunate repeal of the amendments in farm laws, and India’s political opposition has a stake in keeping the farmer poor, but, not withstanding, even if some progressive states can begin to appreciate the food-entrepreneur (anna-udyemi) farmer, we may have salvaged some of the effort.

I would go so far as to say that the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare probably needs to be renamed to the Ministry of Soil Health, Agri Enterprise and Farmer Development, with a future focus. Welfare thinking needs to be replaced with sustainable enterprise thinking for India’s agri future to leverage its potential. Will Budget 2022 take us in that direction or will it be another opportunity lost admidst political churn?