Reverse Migration
Over generations farm plots have been divided amongst children and become smaller, how can trend be reversed?
A few weeks ago, a curious email landed in my mailbox. A researcher from Germany asked me how farmers in India are using AI in their farming practices. I explained that a vast majority of the farmers in India were smallholders who cannot even afford mechanised farming, let alone find any use for AI. To which a prompt reply arrived asking me how India would transition from smallholder to larger holder farming?
It got me thinking.
A few days later, my maid, whose earnings would put her comfortably in the top 15% of Indians, informed me that she was taking leave because she had to go to her village and buy land - 20 Acres of it!
In 1950, just after independence, 75% of the workforce in India was engaged in farming. Agriculture was the biggest contributor both to employment and to the GDP. Over the years, it has been declining, and today, only about 45% of the workforce is employed in farming.
Having said that, India’s population in 1950 was 358 million; today it stands at 1.45 billion. Therefore, if you look at it in absolute terms, the number of farmers in India has gone up from 268 million to 652 million. This, in turn, implies that the land that was being tilled by fewer people is now being tilled by a larger number of people, and proportionately, the land holding per farmer has charted a downward trajectory.
85% of the farmers in India are smallholder farmers with less than 2 hectares (5 Acres) of land.
With such small farms, it is not possible to eke out a living for an entire family. This has created a flood of migrants who are moving away from their villages to the cities in search of work. They live in urban slums and perform menial and daily wage labour in cities to earn a living. That this income is higher than what they would earn at their farm should cause us to pause and think.
The very same people were left stranded and walked back to their villages when the lockdowns were put in place during the pandemic. Some of them were forced to walk hundreds and thousands of kilometres to get back home. Nevertheless, they came back.
Farming is becoming more and more unviable at smaller scales. Not only that, but it is also no longer aspirational amongst those living in villages. The youth in the village want to leave for the cities. Part of the reason there is a fertility collapse in South India is that most rural households wish to educate their children so that they can find respectable jobs in the cities away from the villages. Most cannot afford to put together the resources to educate even one child.
It is getting to a point where there are no ”youth” to be found in villages.
Then, there is another India.
Techies who work 16-hour days in glass prisons to earn obscene sums of money. They burn themselves out following these insane work routines.
While the evidence is anecdotal, I have started to see many such people who are burnt out and investing their money to buy a plot of land to start farming. They can buy a fairly large plot (>30 acres) of land for a sum which would get them a small three-bedroom apartment in the city. They are educated, well-to-do, aware and have the patience to learn organic agriculture. Not only that, they have the ability to connect with the market and get themselves the right price for their produce. They want a simple life which can also provide them with a means for a steady and stable income while producing something real. Something that connects them to land and people.
These individuals buy large parcels of land. 10 hectares or upwards and cultivate several crops, and vegetables that they either package and sell on their own or, in certain cases, even process the produce to deliver an end product.
Is this how India moves or transitions to large holder farms? Will this be the way we make farming a more viable engagement?
Are all the rural folks going to end up in cities, and city folks going to end up in the rural belt?