With increasingly more agricultural households supplementing their incomes by means of different sources, a brand new report has known as for rethinking rural improvement methods and produce in additional reforms within the farm sector to help farmers and farmer households.
“PRICE’s ICE 360° surveys help this, revealing that whereas 42.4% of rural households earn some earnings from agriculture, solely 20.7% are absolutely depending on it. This shift underscores the necessity to rethink rural improvement methods,” stated the report titled ‘Reimagining Annadata Households and Their Livelihoods Past the Farm’ by Individuals Analysis on India’s Client Financial system (PRICE).
The report discovered that whereas many rural households report agriculture as a supply of earnings, a smaller share is fully depending on farming. In line with the PRICE ICE 360° Survey, roughly 42.4% of Indian households or 140 million households in 2024-25 have agriculture and allied actions as a supply of earnings. Nevertheless, solely 20.7% (68.4 million households) are categorised as ‘full-time/common’ agricultural households, that means their main supply of livelihood is farming.
“This stark distinction signifies {that a} important variety of households derive a part of their earnings from non-farm actions, with agriculture taking part in a supplementary function of their total financial construction,” it stated. The report is authored by Rajesh Shukla, Adite Banerjie and Tanvi Menaria of PRICE.
The report additionally highlights that farming alone is now not ample to maintain rural livelihoods and 33% of the earnings of agricultural households is in reality derived from non-farming actions. These embrace non-agricultural self-employment (7.1%), salaries from jobs outdoors of agriculture (3.4%), and remittances (2.6%), it stated, including that this pattern towards non-farm earnings highlights the growing significance of financial diversification for the survival and stability of agricultural households.
The report notes that the common full-time agricultural family in India is projected to earn Rs 7.31 lakh yearly by 2024-25, with a considerable portion of their earnings—67.1%— coming from farming actions. This consists of Rs 4.90 lakh earned immediately from farming and Rs 54,000 (7.4%) from allied agricultural actions resembling dairy, livestock, or different subsidiary agricultural enterprises. “Nevertheless, farming alone is now not ample to maintain rural livelihoods,” it underlines.
It has instructed a number of reforms within the farm sector to help farmers and farmer households. These embrace measures like broadening the definition of Annadata households to incorporate tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and landless agricultural staff, which might guarantee they’re included in welfare schemes resembling PM-Kisan and formal monetary inclusion initiatives. It has additionally known as for selling non-farm employment by fostering rural entrepreneurship and ability improvement to create different earnings alternatives for these households. Increasing agricultural productiveness and enhancing monetary inclusion are a number of the different measures the report has advocated to allow Annadata households to contribute successfully to India’s transformation right into a Viksit Bharat.
