Impediments in Indian Agriculture

India is an agricultural country. At the time of independence approximately seventy percent of India’s population depended on agriculture. Agriculture income contributed higher than the other sectors of economy and one-third of our national income comes from agriculture. The development of agriculture is directly linked with the economic welfare of the country.
Our agriculture solely depended on rainfall up to 1960’s. In case monsoon fails or comes early, the crop fails or we get good harvest respectively. Our agriculture sector remained underdeveloped and we did not produce enough food that is why we need to import food grains from other nations to meet the domestic demand. But with the implementation of green revolution in 1960’s things have changed. It brought great improvement in our agriculture industry. Now country is self-reliant and self sufficient in terms of food availability. The use of chemical fertilizers, irrigation techniques has increased the food production. Now Indian agriculture is producing more food grains for citizens of the country than the demand. Moreover, India is now exporting surplus food grains and other agriculture products to other countries. India stands first in world in the production of pulses, mangos and milk. It ranks second in rice, sugarcane, jute and oil seeds.
The use of high yield verity seeds, fertilizers, irrigation techniques and other new technologies in agriculture has brought desired results on the agriculture. Irrigation improvements like construction of dams, barrages, tube wells, water pumps etc were also to meet the food demand of people of the country with proper management of natural resources and to have expected produce of agriculture products.

Major issues in Indian agriculture:-

Countries population is growing at a very fast rate and we need more food to feed every mouth. We must increase our food production and should check the increasing population also.
Our farmers have been using traditional methods to plough field, to sow seeds and to cut the final crop. These methods should be replaced with new technologies to avoid the wastage of the produce and maintaining the proper standards to plough the field and to sow the seeds.
Extensive use of fertilizer and continuous cultivation for years together affected the fertility of land. Use of manure and gap in field cultivation will help the land to rejuvenate its fertility. Use of techniques such as crop rotation and mixed cropping will also be helpful. Putting baron and wasteland under plough will also increase the area under cultivation. Currently due to unplanned urban planning more cultivable land is used for construction of building houses, factories, roads, etc.
Overuse of water in the field results to the problem of water logging it increases the salinity of the land making it unable to produce the crop.
Small and fragmented landholdings with lack of funds are other hindrance. Irrigation becomes difficult in small fields, the cost of using seeds and fertilized is also relatively higher than that of the large land holdings. Lot of efforts of labor and time is wasted in moving seeds, manure, fertilizer, final produce and cattle from one piece of land to the other.

Post harvest problems

Even after getting the produce farmers have to face the issues such as inadequate storage facilities, absence of agriculture markets especially in rural India. Many of the agricultural products need to be sold or stored before they overripe of get destroyed. Inadequate transport is one of the main handicaps with the post harvest issues. The lack of rural agriculture product market and unorganized linking of villages leads to wastage of the produce. Proper management would benefit the farmers economically and will feed the one in need.
Conclusion
Still there is a lot to improve in agriculture sector. Efforts are being made to encourage farmers to adopt advanced agriculture techniques such as means of irrigation, availability of chemical fertilizers, HYV seeds to increase yield of produce, etc.
The need is to educate the farmer regarding the use of proper quantity of manure, fertilizer and good quality seeds to get desired output of the produce. Optimal utilization of water along with above mentioned elements is essential. Government initiatives with the help of agriculture colleges and universities in association with gram panchayats are crucial for the implementation of the policies. Government should provide adequate and timely loan to the farmers to buy farm machinery and other agricultural equipments.
The government is trying to help farmers in many ways with the help of agencies like Food Corporation of India, , soil health card scheme, Pardhanmantri Krishi Sinchai yojana and APMC to purchase farm produce directly from farmers by linking agriculture mandis at common platform under National Agriculture Market Scheme (NAM). It helps to eliminate the role of middleman and gives better income to farmer directly. Government announced schemes in organized retail of agriculture products and acting as a helping hand with startups working for the development of agriculture of India and to solve the related problems.
 

By: Deepak Thakur