Harbhagwan Singh (45) tills about 65 acres of land in Bibiwala village of Punjab’s Bathinda. His father farmed until 2010, physically sowing the crop, spraying pesticide and fertilizer and cutting the harvest.
Harbhagwan Singh is luckier because he has technology to help reduce the physical labour and also improve productivity. He uses machines for preparing the land before sowing it with the latest seed varieties, to spray fertilizer and pesticide and finally reap the crop to sell.
In the mid-60s, after two years of savage drought, a desperate India had to request American food aid, giving rise to the saying that the country literally lived “ship to mouth.” That humiliation ended with the advent of the Green Revolution.
Fast-forward to 2023, when India’s agriculture exports are poised to scale a new high after hitting a historic high of $50 billion last year (FY 2021-22).
This has been made possible on the back of technological development as well as an extensive agricultural research program.
Farm mechanization by substituting the use of cattle to till farmland with tractors and use of other machinery to reduce physical labour and increase productivity has worked in the country’s as well as its farmers’ favour.
In the old days, manual preparation of the field and physical sowing of seeds would take at least a month despite many workers being used, recalls Harbhagwan Singh. The advent of machines has now reduced the task to a matter of a few days.
“One machine works on about 5 acres of farmland every day. We have two of our own and rent out the others. The work is now completed within a week’s time,” he says.
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Machines at the doorstep
Farmers now have easy access to high-value agricultural equipment at their doorstep which they book via the government’s CHC Farm Machinery and Krishi Kisan App.
Through these apps, farmers select and order agricultural machinery at prices they find feasible from the Custom Hiring Centers located in a radius of 50 kms.
Tractor-mounted machines including harvesters and crop planters are now available and widely used in villages of districts including Jind and Fatehabad in Haryana and Bathinda and Patiala in Punjab that Moneycontrol visited.
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Any tractor mounted machine, be it for sowing or reaping a crop, costs about Rs 2,000 per acre. Small and marginal farmers of both Punjab and Haryana use them extensively for areas as small as 2 acres.
“If we call manual labour or do it ourselves, it will take a number of days and higher amount of money with per-day labour wages going upto Rs 600 per person. We use machines to reduce our work, time and money spent,” says Bira Singh (60) of Dumarkha Khurd village in Jind.
“Technical innovations, undertaking mechanised agriculture, use of chemical fertilizers and borewell irrigation were all part of measures that were extensively undertaken to promote farming at the onset of the Green Revolution,” says Shiv Shankar Singh, CEO of Gramin Vikas Trust, established by the public sector KRIBHCO.
“Varietal innovation of wheat production was done to double the produce as compared to former varieties,” he added.
Hybrid seeds
The use of hybrid varieties of seeds for better yields has extensively been undertaken in the country.
“India since 1951 has produced over 5,508 high-yielding varieties of all major crops such as rice, wheat, cotton, oilseeds crops, pulses, and sugarcane,” according to a book published by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) on Indian agriculture after independence.
To this end, the Department of Agriculture and Co-operation has implemented ‘Development and Strengthening of Infrastructure Facilities for Production and Distribution of Quality Seeds’ since 2005-06.
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The objective of the scheme is to ensure production and multiplication of high-yielding certified/quality seeds of all crops in sufficient quantities and make the seeds available to farmers at affordable prices.
“Seeds for wheat and paddy that I grow have improved. Every year we get inputs from people on which variety to buy. While varieties that give higher quality produce are costlier, they also fetch us good money. All seeds varieties for wheat and paddy now give good output,” said farmer Harbhagwan Singh.
The government formed a baseline on the measures that were taken during the Green Revolution and kept them evolving, said Shiv Shankar Singh of Gramin Vikas Trust.
“Varieties kept improving, chemicals are becoming more efficient, borewell irrigation is being turned to drip irrigation. The government is working on evolving farming chemicals such as urea and DAP,” he says.
DAP is short for Diammonium Phosphate, a commonly used fertilizer.
The farm sector is continuing to evolve with the advent of new products such as Nano Urea and Nano DAP.
While few have adopted the use of Nano Urea in the year since it was launched, experts say its true effect can only be judged in the next five years.
Credit support to farmers
The Centre has also initiated several policy measures to improve the accessibility of farmers to institutional sources of credit. Agricultural credit is disbursed through a multi-agency network consisting of commercial banks, Regional Rural Banks and Cooperatives under the Krishi Credit Card (KCC) scheme.
The scheme provides short-term credit up to Rs 3 lakh at 7 percent interest to farmers. It also provides an additional interest subsidy of 3 percent to those farmers who repay their loans within one year, making the effective interest rate 4 percent.
The scheme is popular among the farmers of Punjab and Haryana. The government also provides collateral-free loans up to Rs 1 lakh.
State government role
The governments of both Haryana and Punjab are doing their bit to nudge farmers to modern methods of agriculture.
Haryana recently started work on precision agriculture and will initiate a project in the Sirsa district.
Precision agriculture enables climate-smart agriculture through judicious use of fertilizer and pesticides, optimizing water usage through micro-irrigation techniques and crop health monitoring through drone imagery, soil health monitoring, local area disease and pest surveillance and increasing adoption of solar pumps.
“The project will be initiated in Sirsa district and based on the learnings, it will be expanded to other districts in phases. Taking forward the initiative of the Central Government for the adoption of Kisan Drones in agricultural activities, the government plans to impart training to 500 young farmers in drone operations,” a statement issued by the Haryana CM’s said.
Punjab, recognising the importance of horticulture in its agricultural economy, allocated Rs 253 crore to the sector in budget 2023-24, announced in March this year.
To promote areas under fruit and vegetable crops in their natural growing regions, the government will set up five new horticulture estates – in Ludhiana, Gurdaspur, Patiala, Bathinda and Faridkot, which will be equipped with the latest technological machinery.
These estates will help in the maintenance of crops, setting up of cold storages and provide other agricultural services.
While the revolution in farming may have reached the big farmers, even trickling down to farmers who own comparatively smaller pieces of land but are more aware, it is still far from the reach of small and marginal farmers who till fewer than 2 acres of land, says Shiv Shankar Singh.
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