A very alarming scenario indeed, as farmers in Odisha are the poorest in the country. Their income-line stands exposed. With an average monthly income of mere Rs1,407 from farming, Odisha farmers occupy the bottom among the major States in the country. Seemingly a horrible hand-to-mouth crisis at hand as the per-day average net income farmers could realise here is mere Rs47.
Such a precarious state-of-affair of farmers in Odisha came to light in a recently released National Sample Survey (NSS) report. The sample survey findings somewhat look quite convincing if one further goes by the latest net-rate-of-return estimates formulated by the State agro nodal centre, the Odisha University for Agriculture Technology (OUAT).
According to the OUAT cost of cultivation and net return data, also shared with the Commission for Agriculture Cost and Prices (CACP), the average profitability of paddy growing farmers per hectare in Odisha has been mere Rs10, 172. It further indicates that a paddy growing farmer gains mere one-third of its total cost incurred per hectare. The profit margin is almost identical for farmers growing pulses too.
In such a scenario, a mono-crop farmer with 1 hectare land could make a net income of around Rs30/day and a bi-cropper could earn a net income of around Rs14, 960 or Rs40/day, suggests the data. This further exposes the spectre of rot in the agro sector in the State, when around 72 per cent farmers in the State have below one hectare land. The less is the size, the more is the cost and lesser the profit or net income will be, explained XIMB Prof Dr Neeraj
Kumar. Noteworthy is Odisha has over 27 lakh farmer households whose principal source of income is from farming only. It is pertinent to mention that in Odisha when around 40 lakh hectare of land is under paddy cultivation, mere 8 lakh is under pulses. This shows in every five cultivators, only one takes up bi-cropping. The acute statistics then got manifested in the average value of assets a farmer has at hand in Odisha. According to the recent NSSO report, the average value of assets of a farmer in Odisha is only Rs6.77 lakh against that of Rs22 lakh in Bihar, Rs19.6 lakh in Jharkhand, Rs15.5 lakh in West Bengal and Rs11 lakh in Chhattisgarh. The result: Odisha has the highest number of farmer households leaving in kutcha houses in the country.
An interesting indicator of miserable farmer state-of-affair in Odisha is revealed by the National Sample Survey finding that nearly 60 per cent farmers here have MGNREGS job card compared to mere 13-29 per cent in agriculturally advanced States like Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat. In the said context, the irony brought to fore by the same NSS report is despite lowest average value asset and poorest living indices,
Odisha has the second highest chunk of farmers (around 24 per cent) without ration card after Jharkhand in the entire eastern and southern India. (The writer is a freelance journalist based in Bhubaneswar)