Mumbai: State Bank of India's house economists on Monday said the recent farm sector reforms reek of parochial thinking and promote lazy farming as they only cater to cereal-producing states.
In the recently concluded monsoon session, the government rushed through three legislation to change the way agricultural produce is marketed, sold and stored by dismantling the decades-old APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) mandis.
Welcoming the legislation that claim to enhance production and farmers' income, the economists at SBI Research on Monday said, "These measures are sine qua non as the country is no more just a cereal granary, and other states are producing diversified crops."
Pencilled by SBI Chief Economist Soumyakanti Ghosh, the report, titled 'Agri-reforms politics: Catering to only cereal producing states and shunning fruits and vegetable is lazy farming and parochial thinking', said, "We are no more just a cereal granary and it is time that we go for white revolution." The report also says it is skewed in favour primarily of Punjab and Haryana that led the green revolution but neglect bigger and more important rice-producing states like UP and Bengal.
Further, the report noted that over the years, share of cereals in the value-addition of crops has plunged from a high of 49 per cent in 1968-69 to 28 per cent in 2018-19, while that of fruits and vegetables has grown rapidly to 30 per cent in crop output from 14 per cent in 1968-69.
"It is an irony that value of cereals per hectare is 12 times less than fruits and vegetables, but we keep on eulogising cereal production. Fruit and vegetables have the highest value of output per hectare followed by condiments and spices," said
the report.