Karnataka - Bangalore   

Per capita income of Karnataka farmers put at Rs. 10,500

BANGALORE: A group of top officials constituted by the State Government has recommended setting up of “Karnataka Agriculture Mission” to improve the economic conditions of farmers in the State.

The document released by Governor Rameshwar Thakur on Wednesday “recognises the agricultural sector in Karnataka as dominated by smallholdings and dry land farming.” The group has advocated organising farmers into groups in every village for the purpose of taking up cultivation of commonly agreed crops, dairy farming and horticulture.

The group that authored the report had Principal Secretary (Finance) M.R. Sreenivasa Murthy as chairman and comprised Principal Secretary (Agriculture). A. Ramaswamy, Principal Secretary (Rural Development) K. Jairaj and Directors of various departments relating to agriculture and the vice-chancellors of the universities of Agricultural Sciences at Bangalore and Dharwad.

The report says that 60 per cent of Karnataka’s population was engaged in agriculture as farmers or as agricultural labourers.

Among the land holding farmers, nearly 75 per cent or about 57 lakh farmers have holdings of about 2 hectares or less. Given the small and, in most cases, uneconomical size of their land holdings, the farmers subsist on low income. The State’s estimated GDP of Rs. 1,94,009 crores in 2006-07 includes Rs. 35,306 crore from the agricultural sector. This income distributed among 71 lakh farmers’ households gives an average household income of only Rs. 52,650 a year. This works out to be only Rs.10,500 per capita as compared with the per capita income of the State’s overall population which was Rs. 34,250 for 2006-07.

Putting the incidences of farmer suicides during 2004-07 at 1,605, the report says that the group approach to farming would enable farmers to obtain loans from financial institutions and technical advice from various extension agencies easily. These institutions will also find it more economical to service groups of farmers than individuals.

The farmer groups can also access markets for agricultural produce more effectively than individual farmers, the report added. The report advocates diversification of farming to reduce the risk and increase the income of farmers.

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