Agricultural Reforms

Agricultural Reforms

Successive governments have undertaken institutional and policy reforms to raise agricultural productivity, improve farmers' incomes, and correct the problems that persist in financing, marketing and land relations.

Land reforms (institutional reforms)

• Abolition of intermediaries (zamindari and similar tenures) soon after Independence, bringing cultivators into a more direct relationship with the state.
• Tenancy reforms — regulation of rent, security of tenure for tenants, and, in some states, conferring ownership rights on tenants cultivating the land.
• Ceiling on land holdings — legal limits on the maximum land an individual/family could hold, with surplus land intended for redistribution to the landless.
• Consolidation of holdings — merging scattered plots of a farmer into a single, compact holding to reduce wastage of land and effort, and cooperative farming initiatives (with mixed success) to help small holdings achieve some economies of scale.

Technological and input-related reforms

• Continued promotion of high-yielding seeds, balanced fertiliser use, plant protection, and expansion of irrigation and micro-irrigation coverage.
• Investment in agricultural research and extension (state agricultural universities, Krishi Vigyan Kendras) to carry new technology to farmers.
• Promotion of farm mechanisation suited to small holdings, and support for allied activities (dairy, poultry, fisheries) to diversify and stabilise rural incomes.

Marketing, credit and price-policy reforms

• Strengthening of the Minimum Support Price and procurement system, and periodic review of MSPs by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP).
• Reforms to APMC laws in several states to allow more competition in agricultural marketing, private markets and contract farming, alongside expansion of e-NAM.
• Steps to widen institutional credit coverage — Kisan Credit Cards, interest subvention on crop loans, and periodic debt-relief measures for distressed farmers.
• Crop insurance schemes (such as the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana) to cushion farmers against yield and revenue losses from natural calamities.

Sustainability-oriented reforms …