Government moots cooperative farming

CHENNAI: With diminishing land holding sizes posing a great challenge to the improvement of agriculture productivity, the government has mooted promotion of cooperative farming in its Vision Document 2023. Experts believe that the idea could be an answer to arrest the rising cost and improve collective bargaining power of farmers.According to the document released by Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Thursday, the average size of operation land holdings in Tamil Nadu has plunged from 1.45 hectares in 1970-71 to 0.83 hectares in 2005-2006. A break up of the land holdings during the period revealed that marginal land holdings increased from 17.1 per cent to 33.5 per cent whereas small holdings went up from 20.5 per cent to 25.22 per cent between 1970 and 2006. However, there was a dip in the large land holdings in the State from 13 per cent to 5.73 per cent in the same period. Officials said this clearly established a trend of fragmentation of land into smaller units.The document said that small holdings directly affected productivity as the farmer would not be able to afford higher investments for mechanisation. Therefore, it said that functional consolidation of land holdings had to be done through promotion of cooperative farming to overcome such a scenario.Senior officials at the Agriculture Department said that the idea was the result of a recent visit of a delegation to Gujarat where such a concept has been put to effect with great success. He said that farmers would be encouraged to form collectives and raise similar crops.They said that the benefits of such cooperative farming were many. Apart from improving the collective bargaining power of farmers, such consolidated crop production would reduce the cost of cultivation.“For example, instead of each farmer with marginal share holdings renting out machines individually, several of them can come together and rent out machines for all their fields. This is one way to reduce the cost of cultivation,” said the official. Such a set up will also help the penetration of modern technology in agriculture as joint liability groups would be able to afford such technology rather than individual farmers.