Farmer's Plight In India

Dear All

If there is a curious software engineer looking for a side activity, I am currently studying farmers' plight in India and would welcome some help.

Over 90% of India's farmers live in poverty and overwhelming majority of poor in India are farmers. Every day about 200 farmers commit suicide in India due to poverty. My initial impression is that the key issues are scale, market access, modernization, and govt intervention.

If we can provide simple solutions that improve lives of even 10-20-100 farmers, even that will be great. This may or may not turn commercial ever because it is a complex problem and the scale is huge.

If this interests you, please let me know.

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Originally Posted by qesehmk

Dear All

If there is a curious software engineer looking for a side activity, I am currently studying farmers' plight in India and would welcome some help.

Over 90% of India's farmers live in poverty and overwhelming majority of poor in India are farmers. Every day about 200 farmers commit suicide in India due to poverty. My initial impression is that the key issues are scale, market access, modernization, and govt intervention.

If we can provide simple solutions that improve lives of even 10-20-100 farmers, even that will be great. This may or may not turn commercial ever because it is a complex problem and the scale is huge.

If this interests you, please let me know.

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Hey Q, Nice to see post on farmers struggle in India. Lack of knowledge/Education on product demand & supply, how to cultivate new crops (like Quinoa) , ROI Analysis for Risk Reward and Supply Chain are some of the problems with agriculture sector in India.

Govt assistance with water projects, Electricity, strict guidelines for quality equipment and seeds, Minimum support price, etc are also very important.

Hi Q,

Thanks for creating this thread.

Always great idea to give something back to country where we are born.

Apart from electricity and water projects, There should be Public and Private investment to build Cold storage facilities for all crops.

Farming should be considered as an economic viable industry where one can choose as a career. This needs investment from govt and private partners. Once the investor is shown that there would be good returns on his investment, there would be economic solution to all the problems.

Farmers should be given confidence that even if he/she looses the harvest, he/she would be economically strong. This should be addressed by providing farmers insurance, subsidized grains, free education to his kids etc.

In case of drought or other natural calamities farmer should be shown alternate source of income by providing jobs.

Govt should promote Farming by telling how important it is for economy of the country.

Hi GCDreamz, you are spot on relative to Knowledge Management. That does seem like a low hanging fruit that people like us can help with from US.

The govt however so far seems to be creating more problems than solving them. There are laws that have stifled innovation and automation of agricultural sector. Farmers have restrictions on land ownership and production of certain items. Worst is that the govt manipulates the export imports to keep prices low. And thus farmers are guaranteed to lose.

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Originally Posted by GCdreamz

Hey Q, Nice to see post on farmers struggle in India. Lack of knowledge/Education on product demand & supply, how to cultivate new crops (like Quinoa) , ROI Analysis for Risk Reward and Supply Chain are some of the problems with agriculture sector in India.

Govt assistance with water projects, Electricity, strict guidelines for quality equipment and seeds, Minimum support price, etc are also very important.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by march1612

Hi Q,

Thanks for creating this thread.

Always great idea to give something back to country where we are born.

Apart from electricity and water projects, There should be Public and Private investment to build Cold storage facilities for all crops.

Farming should be considered as an economic viable industry where one can choose as a career. This needs investment from govt and private partners. Once the investor is shown that there would be good returns on his investment, there would be economic solution to all the problems.

Farmers should be given confidence that even if he/she looses the harvest, he/she would be economically strong. This should be addressed by providing farmers insurance, subsidized grains, free education to his kids etc.

In case of drought or other natural calamities farmer should be shown alternate source of income by providing jobs.

Govt should promote Farming by telling how important it is for economy of the country.

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Hi march1612, what has happened with Farmers in India since independence is truly outrageous. In 1950 average farm income was 75% of national income. Today it is only 30%. Farming certainly should be made viable as an industry. The land ceiling acts are prohibiting that from happening. Without scale capital investments can't happen.