Sreelatha Menon: An income commission for farmers

Farmers are pushing for an income commission to make farming viable and end agrarian distress

When little children in cities have a Happy Meal burger at McDonalds and get a Batman car or Ben 10 toy free, they are getting much more for free — all gift-wrapped by wheat and potato farmers in some far-off village. They are not paying for the labour put in by the farmer, the profits forgone by him, and the higher cost of living that he did not bill on the food buyer. The only remuneration he gets is based on the minimum support price (MSP) determined by the government which cannot be raised beyond a certain level for fear of pushing up food prices. MSP for wheat is less than Rs 11 a kg. MSP also does not take into account the cost of labour (free or paid), the cost of seeds (bought or traditional), or the cost of living.

Besides, MSP is for food procured, which leaves out 80 per cent of the food produced.

The salary of a peon fixed by the Pay Commission is Rs 15,000 a month. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation survey of 2003-04, the monthly income of an average farming household is Rs 2,115. This may include income from non-farm sources, too.

Should the lot of farmers continue to be so miserable that the only option for them is to opt out of agriculture, or life itself through suicides, as is still happening in Andhra Pradesh?

The National Coimmission on Farmers, led by agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan, suggested a rise in MSP as a way out. This was never accepted. Now, farmers and agricultural activists feel a commission providing direct income support to farmers, while not raising food prices, is the way forward.

This tops the list of demands made by the 400 groups of farmers that formed part of an All India Kisan Swaraj Yatra, which ended in Delhi this weekend.

According to G V Ramanjaneyalu of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Hyderabad, having a commission to remunerate the farmer on the basis of cost of living and input prices is urgently needed to make agriculture sustainable. He points out that about 60 per cent farmers take care of their own food needs, reducing the government’s subsidy bill. That 40 per cent of farmers work in their own farms actually means free labour for the foodgrain produced, he points out. But these are not reflected in the reward that a cultivator gets, he says.

Many land-owning families have leased out land to landless farmers. The commission would also need to look at a method to identifying the actual producers.

Devender Sharma, a food economist, says OECD countries like the US have always been providing direct income support to farmers. The average income of a farming household is 255 times more than the average income in Holland. But that doesn’t cause inflation.

He says there are 90 million farming households in the country and, even if they were to get what is given to a peon under the Pay Commission scales, it could mean end to exploitation of cultivators, who remain unpaid or underpaid most of the time. He says the amount should also include MSP.

On funding, Sharma says the government waived taxes of more than Rs 500,000 crore of industry last year alone. If it makes a small reduction in this, the plan can be funded, he says.

But, whatever the way, free lunches dished out by food growers cannot last forever.