Agriculture: achieved a lot but more to be done

The Indian economy has been a growing economy and now it is poised to achieve the level of the fourth and later the third largest economy of the world.

- Kishore Kumar Biswas

Even today, about 45% of its population is directly involved in the agricultural sector alone. As many as 42.3% of the country's workforce (in 2019-20), is directly employed in this sector. Two recent events - the Covid 19 pandemic and the ongoing geo-political problem in Europe has revealed the necessity of a vibrant agricultural sector in the country for economic stability.

India's agricultural status in the global perspective

India's agriculture covers 11.24% of the total arable land of the world. It has 4% of the world's renewable resources. As of 2020, India feeds about 18% of the world's population which is about 1.38 billion.

Ashok Gulati, Infosys Chair professor at ICRIER and Ritika Juneja, fellow at ICRIER (Indian Council for Research and International Economic Relations) in their research article published a few months ago named 'Indian Agriculture Towards 2030', pointed out many interesting data.

How did India achieve self-sufficiency in food production? The reason is simple. Between 1980-81 and 2019-20, the sector registered an annual growth rate of 3.2%. In that period, India's population growth was 1.7% per annum - a rate that was half of the agricultural food production growth rate. This helped India achieve self-sufficiency in food production. At the same time, labour productivity in agriculture is low. India produces about 16.5% of its GDP with the engagement of 42.3% of the country's workforce. Most of the holding size is very small. The average size of the land holding is 1.08 hectare (in 2015-16).