According to estimates, in the year 2006 over 17 000 small scale Indian farmers killed themselves to escape unpayable debts, some of them from loan sharks.
Report by Tapiwa Nyandoro
Too many Indians still rely on small scale farming for a living, while much of the country’s arable land depends on the unpredictable monsoon for rain. Droughts, therefore, are a life threatening issue, especially if you happen to owe a loan shark.
Because of good economic growth in preceding years, India’s Minister of Finance in 2008 was able to provide for debt relief in his budget for farmers who had defaulted on their loans to the formal banking sector.
The risk from the noble gesture was that the dramatic cancellations of loans could raise doubts about the rural credit culture and in future negatively affect the loan repayment ethic among small holder farmers, in the process exposing India’s public finances to an unsustainable burden.
The story sounds familiar to Zimbabweans except that there are no happy endings here. Our rains have become patchier and unpredictable, with the season getting shorter.
The economy is in free fall under a severe liquidity crisis, partly the product of a worsening loan repayment culture, with those “leading by negative example”, to quote the Communist Party of China, non other than the country’s central bank and the central government.
Treasury has no fiscal space to breathe, let alone to ride to the rescue of distressed farmers.
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Due to global climatic change the uncertainty in rainfall patterns that has emerged over the last thirty to forty years is a serious farming risk. It requires mitigation, especially as during that period, Africa’s population has doubled.
Food price inflation is on the rise as diets in Asia, in particular China, switch from cereals/grain mostly to include more and more meat. This is due to rising affluence attributable to the Asian and Latin America economic miracles also over the past thirty or so years.
Between 2010 and 2050 the global population is projected to rise from 7 billion people to 9 billion, whilst incomes are expected to rise by a larger percentage in real terms, as the total urban population doubles.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), projects that the World’s grain output will have to rise by 50%, whilst Soya beans and meat output will have to double by 2050. This unfolding opportunity, amidst the doom and gloom of climatic change, makes large markets available for farming produce at returns that will make scientific drought mitigation in the farming industry affordable, provided however, an eye is kept on the export market and on maximising Total Factor Productivity, a measure which relates to the efficiency of the integrated use of capital, labour and technology. Tariff barriers are not the solution.
Drought mitigation can be through any, or better still all of the following: Crop insurance; Accurate weather forecasting Drip irrigation Non tillage and Agro-forestry with appropriate GMO seeds; Good grain storage facilities Adoption of good Soil Science and other technology driven farming practices; Agriculture research to provide drought and pest tolerant and, or shorter season crops and in the long run ; Reforestation of the deforested areas, thus holding back or even turning back climatic change.
Of the above mitigation factors, water is probably agriculture’s most critical limiting factor. The reason why water matters a lot is that irrigated farmland is two to three times more productive than non-irrigated farmland in the African savanna.
Jain Irrigation, the largest drip-feed irrigation company in India, according to The Economist, has shown that the technology can work for small holders, cutting their water usage by 40% when compared to overhead irrigation. Israeli companies are said to do even better when it comes to the efficient use of water.
Therefore, a week before minister Biti tabled the national budget in Parliament; I paid a visit to a Drip Irrigation vendor in Harare. For under $6000 the vendor is able to install full drip irrigation infrastructure, inclusive of pump, borehole and tank, per hectare.
This would enable a peasant farmer to have two or three crops of maize per year raising yields from the little patch to thirty or more tonnes. “Do they have the capacity to roll out the drip irrigation infrastructure on a national level?” I asked.
The answer was “yes of course”. Besides, they said, there are other vendors in the business.
“Has the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation been there to take notes?” I probed further getting rather excited. The answer was again positive with none other than the minister having paid them a call. “Any other VIP referees I could call for testimony?”, I inquired further. “Yes” was the answer: I could check with one of the country’s Vice-Presidents!
“And who are you bubbly young man with no fear of the dreaded CIO?” I asked. “Ah”, he answered, “I am an agriculture engineering and irrigation student from Chinhoyi University on industrial attachment for a year!” “I see, the brave new generation!” I muttered to myself.
This pleasant surprise did not end there. A week later the Press reported that the country’s Prime Minister had a dream. He wants to see one hundred thousand hectares under drip irrigation in the dry communal areas, a project that would cost around half a billion dollars.
The amount is manageable even by our constrained national budget over a five-year period. Besides, by reducing risk in farming, banks will more eagerly come to the party with working capital for other inputs as crop insurance premiums go down as well. Overall further curtailing risk in a virtuous cycle of enhanced productivity. And so committed is the Prime Minister that his own rural homestead boasts of the technology where recently he held a field day.
Given the VIP already in the know about drip-feed irrigation I expected the National budget to set aside some seed capital for rolling out the infrastructure. Fifty to Sixty million US dollars could see 10 000 hectares put under drip irrigation.
In the communal areas, at a hectare per family, ten thousand families would have been empowered out of poverty. And even more important such empowered families could pay back part or the entire amount, over a period of time, into the ARDA and, or Agribank revolving kit reserved for the program.
Because of year round operations employment opportunities will also have been created and labour capacity utilisation increased. With increased yields the whole value chain will require coordination. If the country is to become a viable net exporter of food we should aspire to grow the land under drip irrigation to some two million hectares.
Output from such a national investment could be twenty million tonnes of maize and eight million tonnes of Soya beans, both per annum, at the very least.This would provide ample raw materials for stock feed for the livestock industry.
Should the Prime Minister’s dream, of having 100 000 hectares under drip irrigation, be realised, then national food security will attained. That land is enough to produce two to three million tonnes of maize per year, sufficient for the country’s requirements. May he dream some more?
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