The Hindu Business Line : Plough-back time
Link: The Hindu Business Line : Plough-back time.
The banana farmers of Jalgaon want more “permanent solutions” from the Finance Minister rather than just loan waivers
Kisan’s share: Jain Irrigation Systems Chairman Bhavarlal Jain (extreme right) at a farmers mela.
Rasheeda Bhagat
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It’s Budget time once again and though not as voluble as corporate India, India’s farmers are expecting a huge bonanza from what is perceived an election-year Budget.
In the Jalgaon belt of Maharashtra, the man who has pioneered drip irrigation in India and can take credit for the popular farm slogan in this belt — jaha keli waha nali (where there is banana there is a tube), has a simple an swer for the continuing distress of Indian farmers. “For the lot of farmers to improve, the policymakers need to be farmers… but they are from Harvard and other business schools, where they don’t teach farming.”
Bhavarlal H. Jain, Chairman of Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd, comes from an agri background; last year his company clocked a turnover of Rs 1,200 crore (this year’s target is Rs 1,800 crore), but he has never lost touch with farmers. At the lush green Jain Hills, the company’s headquarters in Jalgaon, about 400 km from Mumbai, he greets a group of farmers led by V.K. Mahajan, who has bagged an award from the All India Banana Research Institute. Jain sets great store by direct contact with farmers; “my doors are always open to farmers, traders, dealers. For me, talking to them is a rejuvenating experience. I’ve cut short layers of bureaucracy and am in direct contact with them.”
He feels that if Indian agriculture is to grow at a robust rate like other sectors, “we need a farmer prime minister, and you know we’ve had only one farmer PM who was thrown out in no time.”
In 1985 after seeing the benefits of drip irrigation while attending an exhibition in the US, Jain introduced the concept to India, though scepticism was all he got from the policymakers; today 54 other players have come into the field of micro-irrigation but Jain Irrigation enjoys a nearly 50 per cent market share.
In a bid to provide integrated agricultural services, Jain has set up Gurukul, a spanking training-cum-hostel facility for farmers. A busload of farmers from Nanderbad, about 180 km away, has just come in for a five-day training; “we’ll teach them about water management, drip irrigation, hi-tech cultivation like tissue culture and fertigation (injecting fertilisers through drip),” says V.B. Patil, Senior Manager (Agronomy and Training). For a nominal charge — paid by the Agriculture Department — these farmers will stay in the hostel, which can house about 100. For the company the training makes business sense; apart from selling them the drip system it can procure their quality produce for its food-processing division with an annual capacity to handle nearly 58,000 tonnes. It makes juice, juice concentrates, pulp, dehydrated onions, peppers etc.
Double yield
Patil says 98 per cent of banana in Jalgaon district is under drip and along with tissue culture has helped double yield from 15 kg per plant to nearly 30 kg; some like Mahajan even manage 35 kg. “In cotton we have put over 10,000 hectares under drip in one district; drip irrigation has a 30 per cent annual growth rate and covers over 60 different crops — fruits and vegetables, sugarcane, coffee, rubber, cotton and tea and we educate 10,000-15,000 farmers on the need to embrace modern technology,” he says.
While most Indian farmers don’t want to move away from rice, “in Maharashtra many farmers have switched over to value crops such as fruits — grapes, banana, oranges, mosambi, chiku — and commercial crops like sugarcane and cotton.”
Mahajan cultivates nearly 100 acres — half his own and the other half leased — in Wakod, about 60 km from Jalgaon. He also grows cotton, juwar, etc. and for Jain irrigation he is a brand ambassador, being the first banana-grower in this region to embrace drip technology in 1990 as the water table went down. This was done gradually; the cost of putting drip irrigation in one acre is Rs 15,000, of which half comes from the government. Starting with 5,000 banana plants, today he grows over 50,000, each acre taking about 1,500 plants. Says Mahajan, “Unless Indian farmers are helped to use the latest technology, they cannot prosper as technology helps you extract maximum benefits from the land.”
He is a large and prosperous farmer and a savvy one at that, with meticulous records of input prices, labour cost and profits for the last 10 years. Of his three sons, the eldest, a graduate, helps the father, the second is a software engineer working in New York and the youngest is a third-year MBBS student. While the eldest uses a swank mobile phone, the youngest has an imported Japanese motor bike. Even while indulging them, the father frowns on such expensive habits.
Commenting on the distress of Indian farmers, particularly the small and marginal farmer, he says that apart from lack of encouragement and incentives from the government, changing aspirations and lifestyles are also to blame. “The media focuses all the time on globalisation and luxuries; and what is shown on TV we want in our home the next day. But with what the land can give us, can we afford those luxuries? Agar hamari aadatey badal gayi tau hamey bada nuksaan honga (if we change our habits, we’ll suffer). Agriculture can give us a comfortable life but not the kind of glamorous life shown on TV. Professionals in cities earn Rs 30,000 or 50,000; we can’t live like them.”
Vasantrao Mahajan, an M.Sc in agriculture, and secretary of the All India Banana Growers Association and the Maharashtra chapter of Farmers Forum of India, agrees. He owns 10 acres and is passionately involved in helping small farmers with transfer of technology to improve yield. “In my village and district 99 per cent of banana cultivation is under drip,” he says.
But convincing smaller farmers to adopt modern water management techniques like drip or sprinkler irrigation is not easy. Prakash R. Khodpe is a large farmer and Jain Irrigation dealer for drip irrigation systems in Neri, 20 km from Jalgaon. His younger brother is constantly travelling around this region trying to educate the smaller farmers — with landholding of 5-10 acres — to change to drip irrigation. “We help them get finance and show them the advantages of drip, and slowly they are responding. Last year we got 500 farmers to go in for drip and they are happy with the results, as the water they need is cut by half,” says Khodpe. Whether it is Khodpe or Sajay Patil and Kishore Pawar, who are his friends and associates, all of them admit that it is now more profitable to grow banana than cotton and are slowly switching over. “We are also looking at floriculture, as that will give us more profits,” says Khodpe.
But Mahajan admits that not all farms are smart enough to switch over to new technology and more profitable crops. He rues that while the other Indian sectors are growing rapidly agriculture is stagnating, and challenges the government to find out why. They do believe that the farmer should get more for what he grows “but the problem is that even if prices go up a little in food, the general public start screaming, and koi bhi party ho, government ko jeena hei logo ke vote sey (be it any party, its government survives only on votes),” says Mahajan.
Budget relief
So do they expect major relief for farmers in the budget?
“They are saying ki karja maaf karengey (debts will be waived), but that is only a temporary relief. To really help the farmer, pay him higher prices for what he grows,” says Vasantrao.
Though what is incensing them at the moment more than Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s plans, is “Railway Minister Lalu Prasad’s decision to cancel railway wagons for transporting banana.” This year, points out V.K. Mahajan, has been a terrible year for banana as it is afflicted by a vicious disease, “the worst in 50 years”, which will destroy half the crop. “Kum daam tau kisan saha jata hei (the farmer can somehow bear lower rates) but when his crop is damaged he is devastated. Do you know about 2 lakh labourers are linked to the banana economy in this belt? If some factory/industry that gives such employment is in trouble, doesn’t the government bail it out? Then why does it not come to the rescue of farmers in troubled times when their crop is damaged by pest or disease,” he asks.
Vasantrao explains that the Railways has levied a penalty of Rs 15 lakh for cancellation of nine wagons in December 2007, “but this is normal and happens every year. This year a lot of banana crop was lost to disease and the Railways have cancelled remaining wagons and since December 17, farmers have been moving bananas to the north Indian markets by trucks at exorbitant prices.”
Mahajan adds that penalty is not the issue; “we’ll pay it somehow. But they have to understand that this is the only fruit that is transported round the year and every year banana-growers use 125-150 racks, and sometimes a few wagons are not used and till now cancellations were allowed. This year only 18 wagons were cancelled; after all, this is not a factory product and fluctuates with more or less rain. How can they apply goods traffic rules on farmers?”
As we talk, parts of Maharashtra are gripped by violence thanks to Raj Thackeray’s diatribe against north Indians. Perhaps with this in mind, Mahajan warns that of the 70,000-odd hectares under banana cultivation, 50,000 hectares are in the Jalgaon belt. “Almost all the farmers’ roti-rozi (livelihood) is linked to the banana. Look, till your hand or leg doesn’t ache you don’t realise its importance. People here are peaceful because banana gives them livelihood, but if this economy is disrupted by any insensitive act by the Railways, trouble might erupt.”
Farmers are not diplomats!
Bhavarlal Jain has his own take on the neglected agri sector. “The problem is that farmers are not diplomats. They cannot speak good English or any other language. All they can do is toil. And their culture is based on hard work; sweat is all they can offer. They can’t offer you a smooth delivery in English or a slick World Bank presentation to borrow more.” But a positive, he adds, is that Agriculture Minister Shard Pawar is an exception and “he has retained his contact with the farming community”.
On the expected Budget proposal to write off debts, he says, “Per se, the policy of making farmers debt-free looks very good but cannot be a long-term solution. It cuts into your culture; you’re telling them to borrow and not pay. You can waive the interest component, give them instalments drawn over long years —10 – 20 years— to pay the principal amount but the basic tenet that if you borrow you must pay back, must be maintained. But unfortunately we look only at short-term policies.”
Another problem, Jain adds, is that of delivery; “even if you have the money and a credit line, and a prime minister and finance minister who understand the right priorities as we do have now, the agriculture sector is unable to accept or absorb the allocated money because of lousy delivery mechanisms.
His take on farmers’ suicides: “The heart bleeds… the farmer who is supposed to be the foundation of your civilisation is driven to suicide. It never happened before and is happening now because the gap between the haves and have-nots has widened. This will lead to unrest and the younger generation moving away from farming, as is already happening. But money cannot feed you, can it?”
Defying cliches, customs
Dreaming big: Zainab with mother Nafisa (left). RASHEEDA BHAGAT
She certainly does not fit the stereotype image of a farmer from Madhya Pradesh. But at 28, Zainab Sabir Husain is virtually running the agri-business of her father, and this includes growing cotton, chillies and wheat on the family farm of 50 acres in Badwani, near Indore, which has the good fortune of having the Narmada flow by. But Zainab, a postgraduate in chemical science with specialisation in pesticides and agro chemicals, is a young woman in a hurry to adopt modern techniques of water and soil management, cropping patterns and switch from traditional patterns of agriculture to the more profitable horticulture and even floriculture. She lives in Jalgaon with her grandparents; "I sent her here as a child because education standards are better; she was very bright and I wanted her to study," says her mother Nafisa. A member of the Krishak Samaj, she has been in touch with Jain Irrigation Systems for the last five years. "As a student, I did my project in drip irrigation and got the model from them. I am now ready to switch to drip irrigation in a gradual manner," she says. Meanwhile she also wants to do her PhD in floriculture. The only daughter of her parents, as a child Zainab would go along with her father to their fields as well as to the shop where he sells agro products like pesticides and fertilisers. As ill-health plagued him, she gradually took charge, and now sees a great future in "growing fruits like chikuand sitafal as they consume less water." But V.B. Patil, Senior Manager (Agronomy and Training), Jain Irrigation, urges her to go in for banana with tissue culture as "it is more profitable. And you must look at floriculture too; we'll organise your training, the future lies only in such crops." Interestingly, Zainab has never thought of shifting away from agriculture to any other profession; "I certainly see a future in farming in India, provided we keep up with the latest technology and innovate all the time." But isn't there pressure from her family to get married? "There is, from my grandparents, but my parents have backed me; and till I finish my PhD, no marriage for me," she grins.
