Of the total number of small and marginal holding farmers globally (about 500m), a large chunk – almost 30% – reside in India. As per International standards, a 15–20-hectare land holding farmer in Africa or Southeast Asia is called a small farmer. The same small/marginal holding farmer in India is someone having less than 2 hectares of land. They constitute over 90% of the total farmer population of India. To impact this population alone and focus on doubling their income and bringing transformational changes would augment well for India in poverty alleviation.

As Sameer Tandon, Regional Director, ASEANZ, UPL says, “when the government talks about doubling farmer income, you are very clearly going to impact everyone in the chain.”

At almost 120m, the small and marginal farmers present a very fragmented segment for the upstream part of agriculture. It leads to information asymmetry. This means that all stakeholders who engage with these farmers for their business don’t have access to real-time information or even reliable information—including the farmers themselves. This then leads to sub-optimal business decisions for various stakeholders.

To put things in perspective, India has the highest arable land; we enjoy sunshine throughout the year and hence can have 2-3 seasons. Yet, the yield per hectare is the lowest in the world (we could compare ourselves to some underdeveloped countries) as our dependence on farm labour is huge.

“In terms of total arable land, India has about 1.5 times more arable land than China, and if we were to just look at the crop protection market, India stands at USD 3b versus China which is at USD 12b,” shared Sameer.

This is just one example of how sub-optimal we are in terms of our efforts to provide inputs. The fragmented land holding also poses a challenge in terms of our inability to access information or reliable data that can help the stakeholders to be proactive and provide optimal solutions at the input level—be it in the form of seeds, nutrients, crops to grow, soil quality, prediction of climatic conditions or even pesticides to spray to protect against attacks.

With doubling farmer income and moving towards sustainable agriculture as the pivot, various stakeholders have been deliberating on this challenging scenario. What seems to have come out is a consensus that digitalisation will help address and contribute to this cause and address other pain points in the entire ecosystem, especially at the farmer level.

Another challenge is water.

Indian agriculture is a big guzzler of fresh water. It uses up to a staggering 76% of all the fresh water available. We are in the red zone as far as water goes. This needs dire attention as water tables are going down dramatically in parts of India, along with challenges that climate change pose. Mechanisation of farms (which historically was linked to having a tractor in the farm which was primarily used for transportation purposes), crop diversification, driving efficient rice production system (biggest consumer of water), economically viable crop seeding are some things that India needs to push at a fast rate.

As Mr. D Narain, President Bayer South Asia and Global Head of Smallholder Farming says, “If we don’t make a shift in some of the biggest areas of challenges, like water, you will not move the needle.”