Alarm bells seemingly ring louder for the State with farmers in Odisha pressing the quit button in a big way. With a steep rise in indebtedness in a span of a decade, the State has seen around 7 per cent farming households quitting the cultivation profession altogether. Farming in rural Odisha looks no more a main occupation with only 36 per cent households having cultivation as their principal source of income.
Between 2003 and 2013, Odisha recorded a steep fall in households going for farming. From around 64 per cent rural households engaged in farming in 2003, the pie shrunk to around 57 per cent in 2013. There is distraught among farmers in Odisha as indebtedness incidence spiked by over 9 per cent to around 57 per cent. Incidence of indebtedness in Odisha is now over 5 per cent higher than the national average compared to around 1 per cent below the national average in 2003.
This wild swing in farmers’ fortunes in Odisha has been laid bare by the recently released Situational Assessment Survey (SAS) of farmers by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). Interestingly, if SAS is to be believed, the farmers quitted not to take up some non-farming business; rather they took up casual labour wage work under MGNREGA. This trend has also been observed in the 2011 Census.
What looks ominous for Odisha is proportionately it has now more farmers indebted than Bihar, UP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, MP and West Bengal has. The shocker for the State is farmers with over 10 hectares land in Odisha have the highest average loan outstanding Rs22 lakh) in the country — 10 times that of in Andhra Pradesh that have the highest indebtedness in the country.
According to SAS, the average gross cropped area by a farmer during kharif season in Odisha is around 0.7 hectare. And the average outstanding loan a farmer in this category bears is around Rs33,700, which is higher than farmers in same category in suicide prone Maharashtra owe. The latest agriculture census shows around 72 per cent in Odisha owns below 1 hectare land and around 12-13 per cent own 4-10 hectares. The SAS shows farmers having below 1 ha land in Odisha figures among top-10 farmers’ indebtedness States in country owing higher loan amount.
Consider why the indebtedness is growing. The SAS found that farmers with below 1 hectare land after meeting their monthly expenditure could avail a spare amount of Rs250 –Rs540 for investment in productive assets. Since a farmer needs at least Rs1,000 per month towards crop-related expenses, he takes loan to meet the capital requirement to grow crops.
What pinches State farmers most is with lesser investment on inputs meant for accomplishing higher yields like seeds, they reap an output value below that of national average. For instance, the SAS shows Odisha farmers spend only Rs46/month towards seeds against Rs147 by their Bihar counterparts. The result: average main value of output a farmer in Odisha realised per month is Rs2,307 against Rs3,037 by his Bihar counterpart. Farmers in Odisha on average spend Rs8/month as interest on loans against Rs3 by their Bihar counterpart, which explains the perilous state of Odisha farmers.