86% farm households in state under debt: Study

Patiala

The agrarian crisis seems to be rising as four-fifths of farm and agricultural labour households are under debt in Punjab, reveals a study.

The study, published in the Journal of Rural Development, says a total of 85.9 per cent of agricultural dependent households in Punjab are under debt. The study, called ‘Levels of Living Farmers and Agricultural labourers’, was published by the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Ministry of Rural Development. It shows that the amount of debt per indebted household increases as the farm size goes up but the amount of debt per owned acre decreases as the farm size increases, which implies that the burden of debt is greater on the lower farm size categories as compared to the upper farm size categories.

As many as 89.06 per cent of the semi-medium farm households are under debt while in case of marginal, small, medium and large farm size categories, these percentages are 83.33, 88.64, 84.09 and 82.61, respectively. Similarly, 80.7 per cent of agricultural labour households are under debt according to the study conducted by a group of professors of Punjabi University, Patiala.

According to the study, the average debt per indebted farm household in rural Punjab is Rs 5.52 lakh while the average amount of debt per indebted agricultural labourer household is Rs 68, 329.88.

Gian Singh, economics professor, Punjabi University, Patiala, said, “It is an utmost necessity to revisit the land reforms in favour of marginal and small farmers. Moreover, agricultural labourers are an important section of the farming community and they need to be looked after.”Gian Singh said apart from large-scale farmers, all the other categories of farmers were facing a huge crisis. “Due to high diesel and fertilizer prices along with other expenses, there has been a sharp decline in profitability in the agriculture sector. The cost of input has been increasing faster than the output. For labourers, everything is at stake just to make the two ends meet,” he added.