India has become one of the fastest growing economies in the world and there has been a lot of innovation in the past few years that has contributed to it. Be it manufacturing, services or financial sector — all have benefited from it. Agriculture which was written off, is making a big comeback with the use of different technologies. Imagine the millions of lives in India who will be directly impacted by our SoilsiNew Microb Technology Products. This is what SoilsiNew Agriculture 2.0 is all about.
Agriculture is said to be India’s largest private-sector enterprise, engaging nearly 119 million farmers and another 144 million landless labourers, as per the 2015 Census.
Agriculture, the backbone of Indian economy, contributes to the overall economic growth of the country and determines the standard of life for more than 50% of the Indian population. Agriculture contributes only about 14% to the overall GDP but its impact is felt in the manufacturing sector as well as the services sector as the rural population has become a significant consumer of goods and services in the last couple of decades.
“Over 2500 years ago, Indian farmers discovered and began farming spices and sugarcane. People in India had invented, by about 500 BC, the process to produce sugar crystals.”
As per the 2015 FAO world agriculture statistics, India is the world’s largest producer of many fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, major spices, select fibrous crops such as jute, staples such as millets and castor oil seed. India is the second largest producer of wheat and rice, the world’s major food staples.
India is the world’s second or third largest producer of several dry fruits, agriculture-based textile raw materials, roots and tuber crops, pulses, farmed fish, eggs, coconut, sugarcane and numerous vegetables. India ranked in the world’s five largest producers of over 80% of agricultural produce items, including many cash crops such as coffee and cotton, in 2014.
A report from 2012 claimed India’s population is growing faster than its ability to produce rice and wheat. Other recent studies claim India can easily feed its growing population, plus produce wheat and rice for global exports, if it can reduce food staple spoilage, improve its infrastructure and raise its farm productivity to those achieved by other developing countries such as Brazil and China.
In fiscal year ending June 2013, with a normal monsoon season, Indian agriculture accomplished an all-time record production of 85.9 million tonnes of wheat, a 6.4% increase from a year earlier. Rice output in India hit a new record at 95.3 million tonnes, a 7% increase from the year earlier.
Indian farmers, thus produced about 71 kilograms of wheat and 80 kilograms of rice for every member of the Indian population.
India exported $39 billion worth of agricultural products in 2013-14, making it the seventh largest agricultural exporter worldwide, and the sixth largest net exporter. This represents explosive growth, as in 2005 net export were about $5 billion. India is the fastest growing exporter of agricultural products over a 10-year period, its $39 billion of net exports is more than double the combined exports of the European Union. It has become one of the world’s largest supplier of rice, cotton, sugar and wheat.
Despite these recent accomplishments, agriculture has the potential for major productivity and total output gains, because crop yields in India are still just 30% to 60% of the best sustainable crop yields achievable in the farms of developed and other developing countries. Additionally, losses after harvest due to poor infrastructure and unorganized retail cause India to experience some of the highest food losses in the world.
In the past 20 years, nearly 300,000 farmers have committed suicide — India’s National Crime Records Bureau
Farmer suicide is a wrenching and contentious issue in India. There are more farmers in India than in any other country and the suicide rate for farmers is 48 percent higher than any other profession. Although rapidly urbanizing, 845 million Indians live in predominately rural areas. And almost all Indians now living in cities grew up in farming villages or small towns, or are only one generation away from the countryside.
The roots of Indian farmer despair have been well researched and documented: livelihoods drained away by spiraling debt; crops and livestock destroyed by drought or unseasonable monsoon rains associated with climate change; plummeting water tables from rampant groundwater overuse; the loss of agricultural land to development; a collapse in cotton prices and a dependence on expensive genetically modified seeds.
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