Recently I was reading an article in the newspaper that tried to throw some light on why basic things like green vegetables are expensive in our country. After all ours is a farmers’ country. Most of our population grows food and depends on it for livelihood. A big reason that was cited was, the retailers. The giant retailers are buying all the vegetables in the market, creating a scarcity, and consequently, upping the prices. Of course, there is a litany of middle-men, transporters and wholesalers who eat away most of the income that is supposed to reach the farmers and the food producers.
Apart from this, I think inefficient farming methods and underdeveloped farming communities too play their parts in causing the food scarcity. We grow nearly 11 per cent of all the world’s vegetables, 15 per cent of all the fruit, and 54% of India’s land is used for agriculture, but still our farmers live in poverty and we don’t have enough to eat.
The NGOs and the government are doing whatever they can do, but I think the real solution lies with the end-customer — the people who eventually buy the farm products and consume them. People like you and me. Or rather, the RWAs (resident welfare associations).
The RWAs can “adopt” farming villages, provide the farmers the facilities to grow better, and then buy produce directly from them. This will involve forming the core working groups for different areas. Then these groups will individually contact the village representatives and coordinate the whole thing. I’m sure this is not an easy task but once a methodology is evolved (it might take more than 2 or 3 years) it can work wonders with our sustenance plans. The food quality will improve, the price will come down, the farmers will no longer be poor, and people will stop fleeing the villages in search of job opportunities.
This way, there will develop a healthy relationship between rural and urban citizens and a new, parallel economy will come into existence consisting of three economic entities:
- The producers
- The coordinators or the NGOs
- The buyers
Of course this just can’t start happening. There’ll be transportation required, stocking, refrigeration, protection from pests and weather, the technology to produce food efficiently and without straining the land and the ecology and the farmers, I mean, scores of things will need to be taken care of. The key factor would be, making it lucrative for all the three parties. Once we know how to make it lucrative for all the parties, we’ll have a solution.
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