(Civil Services Exam 2010- 150 words)
Question:
Small farms holder need to be strengthened to achieve national food security. Do you agree with the statement? Substantiate.
Answer:
* Household owing small farms along with agriculture labor constitutes more than 50% of total population of our country which generally practice subsistence farming. The bulk of marginalized and underprivileged population of the country also belongs to category, thus strengthening the small farms have a key role to play to achieve food security.
Food security has three connotations:
1.Affordability of the food
2.Availability of the food
3.Accessibility of the food
* Strengthening the small farms would have the direct impact on the first two connotations of food security i.e. affordability and availability of food.
* The agriculture productivity of the farms in India in general and small farms in particular is very low. The investment, capital formation and access to the institutional credit in the small farm sector are in a pathetic state. Fragmentation of the land, lack of modern farm inputs including high yielding varieties of crop are also the constraints faced by the small farmers.
* Strengthening the above in the small farm sector would increase the productivity and production thus would ensure the higher availability of the food. Also this would increase the farm income and thus enhance the affordability of the small farmers. This would have direct impact on achieving the food security.