NEW DELHI: The National Commission on Farmers has recommended that the agriculture year 2006-07 be designated as the `Year of Agricultural Renewal' and that it address the issues of the small farmer, women in farming and the landless labour.

Noting that the `cost-risk-return' structures of farming were becoming adverse, the Commission, in its third report submitted to the Government last week, has said policy reform is long overdue.

The Commission, chaired by M.S. Swaminathan, has suggested the setting up of an Indian Trade Organisation (ITO) and India's own boxes for domestic agricultural support on the model of the World Trade Organisation. The modest support extended to farmers should be classified — that which is of the nature of life and livelihood saving support to small farm families, and the other which could be considered trade distorting in the global market. The ITO could be a virtual organisation specialising in WTO affairs.

The report has underscored the need for policy reform to be pro-farmer, pro-women and pro-landless agricultural labour.

"If we do not attend to these problems urgently, the `Indian enigma' of the co-existence of enormous technological capability and entrepreneurship, on the one hand, and extensive under-nutrition, poverty and deprivation, on the other, will not only persist but also lead to social disruption and violence."

It underscores the need for initiating an integrated package to increase farm productivity and profitability in perpetuity without associated ecological harm. The programmes should cover all major agro-ecological regions. Not only should decline be reversed but also farm families helped to bridge the gap between potential and actual yields.

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