Agriculture a prime sector of Indian economy with about 50% of its working population has proven why it’s being called as the backbone of our country. Amid covid-19 pandemic the imposed lockdowns have crushed the global economy badly. In India lockdown since more than 2 months has brought down the growth of major economic sectors of the country (service and manufacturing) down and even negative. But the agricultural sector in the financial year of 2019-20 has shown a good growth putting aside all barriers.
In the Quarter 1 of FY19-20 country’s overall GDP growth rate was 7.1% (Manufacturing: 10.7%, Services: 8.5%, Agriculture: 3.8%) where in Quarter 4 overall GDP growth rate was 3.1% (Manufacturing: -1.4%, Services: 2.6%, Agriculture: 5.9%) and agricultural sector has performed exceptionally well during this period while the overall GDP growth has been at its lowest in last 11 years.
So the real growth rate of agricultural sector in FY19-20 is 4% (2011-12 base year) and nominal growth rate is 11.4% with an inflationary impact of 7.4%, which clearly shows the hike in the prices of agricultural commodities at the current time.
The present growth of Agricultural sector is welcoming but at the other-side this growth and inflationary hike is officially interpreted as the hike in the farmers’ income, which is so disappointing looking at the ground situation. Although our farmers give their full contribution to the hike in production but are getting lesser share in the hiked price due to more middlemen and less regulated marketing infrastructure and pricing. To sustain the growth rate and encourage our farmers the need of a regulated, transparent and effective marketing system is must.
Jagadananda Pradhan
Bsc(ag), CUTM
