Introduction

This chapter focuses on the pathways into farming among youth in select locales in the state of Tamil Nadu, southern India and what being in farming means for their lives and livelihoods. In doing so, we offer some interpretations about youth experiences of being a farmer, what they perceive as constraints in securing decent livelihoods, and the institutional context in which such processes and perceptions are embedded. We point out that regional political economy shapes the institutional context in which youth develop aspirations and dispensation towards farming. The extensive diversification into the non-farm and the broad base of education in the farming communities in the state, we argue, have deeply influenced how farming is located in relation to other occupations. We elaborate on these details beginning with a discussion of data collection including our study sites and the sample of young farmers.

Data Collection

Despite a relatively more diffused rural-urban continuum, inter-regional differences persist across Tamil Nadu in agricultural and human development. To understand how such regional differences shape the processes of becoming and being a young farmer, we chose to interview young farmers in three different locations: (i) western Tamil Nadu or what is referred to as Kongunadu has been the centre of Green Revolution in the state as well as a region that has diversified extensively based on investments of agrarian surplus into industry and services. The region also has relatively larger farm holdings compared to the rest of the state, especially among the Kongu Vellalas, an agrarian caste that has also extensively diversified out of agriculture. Here, we conducted interviews among farmers across four adjoining districts: Coimbatore, Erode, Tiruppur, and the Nilgiris. While the first three are typical of the region, the Nilgiris is a hilly region with a vibrant horticulture. (ii) The districts bordering Chennai also have a strong agricultural economy traditionally based on tank irrigation and paddy cultivation. Urban expansion and poor tank management have eroded this economy in part, but expansion of urban demand for fruits and vegetables has led to agricultural diversification and intensification on the periphery. Landholding size on an average is, however, smaller than in western Tamil Nadu. We conducted interviews in Kancheepuram district bordering Chennai. (iii) There are also districts like Tiruvannamalai that are predominantly agrarian with relatively poor transport and employment links to the urban and low levels of development. Tiruvannamalai is one of the most backward districts in the state with a large Dalit population who have limited access to land. As elsewhere in the country, caste differences underlie access to land. The lowest castes, referred to officially as Scheduled Castes (Dalits is the term that caste members prefer), have historically been landless agricultural workers, and even when they own land, they are mostly marginal and small farmers.

We interviewed 58 young farmers to capture regional and caste divergences. The largest number of farmers—42—that we interviewed are from western Tamil Nadu, out of which 36 young farmers belong to the Kongu Vellala caste, three were young Dalit farmers, and three were young farmers from the Badaga caste in the Nilgiris. We interviewed eight young farmers each in Tiruvannamalai and in Kancheepuram district bordering the Chennai metropolitan region. In total, we interviewed 16 women farmers, with 11 from Coimbatore and the remaining from Tiruvannamalai. The Tiruvannamalai young women farmers are Dalit and are members of a collective that a civil society organization coordinates to practice organic farming. We also interviewed six older farmers, two organic farmers who have moved from high-paying non-farm jobs into agriculture, two members of organic farmers’ movements, and two officials associated with the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.

The young farmers in western Tamil Nadu tend to have more land on average (four to six acres) when compared to farmers in Tiruvannamalai and Chennai regions, with the largest landholding size being 20 acres. In the latter region, young farmers mostly owned one to three acres of land with the largest landholding size being five acres. Importantly, across the state, farmers can commute to a nearby town to take up non-farm work. Crops grown varied from tree crops such as coconuts, horticulture and floriculture, paddy, turmeric, and tobacco. Farmers have often responded to changing physical and market conditions through shifts to different crops.

In terms of age profile, the average age of our sample of respondents was 36, with six of them below age 30. In general, our sample farmer households had at least one member employed outside agriculture. Dominant non-farm employment options include working in workshops, garment or textile units, or undertaking petty service provisioning. Non-farm businesses include a woman farmer’s husband running a tea shop in the village and a male farmer diversifying into agro-processing and setting up a groundnut oil mill. A few in the Chennai region reported taking part in real estate activities. Although not directly reported, a few households were also engaged in money lending. In some cases, they had siblings working in professional white-collar jobs elsewhere who help these young farmers to financially negotiate the vulnerabilities emanating from agriculture. Among respondents in Chennai and Coimbatore regions, a few worked in factories or a small firm before quitting or losing their jobs and taking up farming. One young male farmer (35 years old; owning 10 acres) continues to work in an IT-related job in Bangalore and manages the family farm with his grandfather’s help. One young woman farmer was also an anganwadi (government childcare) worker. A few of the Dalit women farmers work as agricultural labourers when they have less work on their own farms.

Pathways into Farming

For all of the young farmers that we interviewed, the pathway into farming was through inheritance, to continue their parents’ vocation. Most respondents had on average 10 years of schooling. A few respondents secured a diploma in engineering, or an undergraduate degree, including in engineering. There was one farmer who had a graduate degree. Barring such farmers, many respondents cited a failure to pursue education as the main reason for entry into farming. Importantly, entry into farming among the better educated was tied to a lack of access to quality jobs. This is best represented by Mohan aged 31 years,Footnote 1 a farmer who grows vegetables in a village near Chennai. His parents used to grow paddy earlier; a rising demand for vegetables from the city enabled the shift. He completed a diploma in mechanical engineering and found temporary employment in an auto firm near his home. Within a year of Mohan joining the firm, it shut down due to financial losses. After failing to secure similar employment, he entered into farming and continues to work with his parents on the farm. In the case of most young farmers with lower educational qualifications, either a parental inability to sustain their child’s education or failure to pass final exams led them to stay home and help their family with farm work. According to Murugan, a 43-year-old farmer in western Tamil Nadu with eight years of schooling: “I didn’t study very well. So, I remained stuck in agriculture. Thinking back, I am not sure how I would have done had I been in any other job. I like what I do. I think the only key to success here is constant hard work. I think that is the key to success anywhere. Here, it appears harder—that’s all.”

Only in three cases, including two from the Nilgiris, respondents decided to take up farming with their family while studying. The two young farmers in the Nilgiris mentioned that they did not aspire for much else as the entire village was involved in agriculture. In the third case, the farmer from western Tamil Nadu was always keen to enter farming, even though he had completed a diploma in engineering. Some of the male farmers also said that their parents insisted that they should acquire a good education, even if they wanted to enter farming. Despite not being the preferred choice at the time of entry, many of these young farmers see this entry favourably in relation to working outside agriculture.

The pathways into farming for women farmers overlap with that of male farmers, but there are differences. Although born in cultivating or agricultural labour households, women’s entry into farming is largely tied to their marriage into farming households. As in the case of men, many of these women helped their parents on the farm before marriage while still studying. Young women farmer respondents discontinued their education after 8–12 years of schooling. In addition to factors that young male farmers report for discontinuing education, women farmers state that their parents did not encourage them to travel far for higher education. After dropping out, they tend to work in agriculture but, more importantly, in the non-farm sector such as in the power loom weaving units, garment factories, and cotton spinning mills that dot across western Tamil Nadu. They discontinue the non-farm work once they are married. After marriage, they either find themselves assisting the husband and in-laws on their farms or on occasion, assist the in-laws when the husband is engaged in non-farm work or farm on their own. At times, women also work on their parents’ lands if they are older with no sons or support from these sons. This happens due to South Indian kinship arrangements where daughters are usually not married too far away from their natal homes. Still, farming is not something that most young women or their families choose. Excerpts from an interview with Jothi (28 years), who is married to a 36-year-old farmer in Erode district, western Tamil Nadu, reveal this:

I like to study. I finished my 12th. My village is near Arichaloor. But my father had no money. We were two sisters. There was a compulsion that if they spent on my education, they need to spend on her education as well. So, they stopped both our education. I wanted to study after marriage, but since I had a child right after, I couldn’t get around to studying further. I used to work for a local garment company before marriage …My father hated it, if we went to the farm. He wanted us to be inside the house. He would tell me that even if I did not know to read/write or was not interested in studying, I could just go and keep typing at a computer or teach at an elementary school. He was very particular that both his children were actually people who were well educated and who were placed in good jobs.

But married into a farming family she had little choice. Selvi, a 34-year-old farmer, again from western Tamil Nadu, has a similar narrative about her and her brother’s entry into farming:

My husband and I both studied up to 10th standard. I was so passionate about studying further. I was a very bright student…I used to cry for several days, asking that I should be allowed to go to school. But, my father wouldn’t allow me. There was no one to go from there to the school with me. Actually, I had to change two buses to get to the school. So, it was not safe for me, particularly while returning home. Even for the 10th grade, I had to walk four kilometres. I begged my parents, but then, slowly, I also let it go. It was not their fault, you know! Those days were like that. It was not important for anyone. My brother tried to drag on for another two years. But, after my father passed away, my brother had to get back to farming… Whenever I would go rearing cows and doing farming, if I found any paper, I would read it. My father did feel sad about it and got me lots of books, but then he couldn’t help me in getting to school. After I got married, I forgot all about it. Then, I had to convince myself saying farming is the thing I am probably destined to do.

The case of 33-year-old male farmer Subbu, who has an undergraduate degree in commerce, illustrates how entry into farming was often not the first option, but over time becomes the preferred option:

When I grew up, agriculture was rewarding. It was lucrative. But, I did not want to be in farming. I wanted to get out of farming, go to Coimbatore and get a job. But, now things have changed completely. I want to be only in agriculture… Before getting married, I used to work in a garment factory as a staff supervisor in Tiruppur… After getting married, I quit. I was working full-time in farming. Now, recently, since there is no water, I went back to the garment factory job… With the commute, it gets difficult to come back and do anything. But, weekends, I am at the farm, helping out with whatever I can.

Given the importance of family labour to small farms, farms become less viable when labour is inadequate. Another pathway in this context is when parents fall ill or one of them dies leaving the children (often sons) with no option other than to take over farming. Entry into farming, however, allows them to diversify into different livelihoods as we mentioned earlier. Young men’s entry into farming, especially after working in the non-farm sector, highlights the vulnerabilities that the bulk of non-farm employment poses. Poor incomes, lack of economic mobility, and job insecurity have all contributed to educated youths’ entry into agriculture. At the time of entry into agriculture, the move is regarded as downward mobility. Over time, they prefer to continue to be in agriculture. At the same time, the low status associated with farming also means fears of not being able to find a bride. Farmers we interviewed in western Tamil Nadu often spoke of reluctance on the part of women and their parents in marrying men who are primarily in farming.

Crisis of Agrarian Masculinities

While the heteronormative patriarchal-patrilineal context of farming makes it hard for women to be identified as independent farmers and, more importantly, to own land, which pushes them to look outside farming for better lives, there are also caste markers of manual work. Apart from issues of the viability of livelihoods, young men tend to refrain from entering farming because of a growing fear that they may not find a bride. “I can tell you one thing—no one in agriculture gets a bride!” says Perumal, a 30-year-old male farmer who has been married for a year. Responding to a question about how he managed to get married, he says, “Only circumstances. Maybe because I own land.” Often young women tend to be better educated and prefer not to undertake manual work on the farm. It is, therefore, not merely tied to farming’s economic viability and the probability of a decent livelihood but also to a set of values and meanings ascribed to manual work and agricultural work. Although this devaluation of “peasant work” has global resonance (Bourdieu 2008), in Tamil Nadu, it is also tied to the dominant political narrative that conceives social justice as a move away from a caste-determined division of labour (Aloysius 2013).

The views of some of the farmer respondents in the state strongly echo Srinivasan’s (2015) observations on the failure of peasant youth to marry within their caste. Jothi provides some insights on this shifting ascription of status to a farmer:

Parents do not encourage girls to get married to someone in farming. So, what men do is, they take up [non-farm] employment around their 20s and once they get married, they quit their job and then come back into farming. This happens a lot! It is so popular now that the girls insist that their husband should not move into farming after their marriage. A situation has been created where boys find work outside, despite having more than 10 acres to their name… This is only for the past few years. Before that, there was nothing like this. When I got married, 10 years ago, I had no issues working at the farm, or marrying someone who is into full-time farming.

Venkatesan (42 years old), who left a low-paying job to take up farming, points to how rather than income from agriculture, it is the shifting social value around farming that undermines his chances of marrying:

I haven’t got married yet… There are so many men here in the village…even those who do part-time work are not getting married because no woman wants to marry a farmer. No one respects farmers… They expect only a daily/monthly income… In 2007, I was getting 5000 Rupees. I wanted to do what I was interested in. So, I quit. They would not have bothered if that is all I made as long as I had a job. No one is realizing that they cannot get a raise or keep the job these days.

While land ownership still commands and bestows social status, farm livelihoods are not valued when compared to work in the non-farm formal economy. While this is not an issue in the Tiruvannamalai region, farmers near Chennai express apprehensions about the diminishing prospects of marrying. While male respondents that we interviewed are already married, they concede that the prospects for marriage have diminished at present. This desire is also tied to material shifts in the state. Broad-based access to education in Tamil Nadu has meant that members of cultivating castes have managed to access high-end jobs, triggering aspirations that often result in exit from agriculture.

Access to Land

Most of the study respondents own less than five acres of land, consistent with the bulk of the farming population in Tamil Nadu and even India at large. As Sivakami, a 32-year-old woman farmer in western Tamil Nadu, says, “We need at least 10 acres to do agriculture exclusively…especially if you have to pay school fees and other expenses.” Her husband works in a workshop in Kangayam, a nearby town, and she too worked in a garment factory before marrying. Few respondents report buying land towards consolidation within agriculture. This inability to access is tied to rising rural land prices across the country (Chakravorty 2013, also see Chap. 8). Chakravorty attributes this price rise to urban actors’ speculative investments in land, which is also borne out by a Tamil Nadu-specific, micro-level study (Vijayabaskar and Menon 2018). During our fieldwork, we did observe manifestations of this phenomenon in two of our field sites—around Chennai and western Tamil Nadu. Given the poor returns on farming, the increase in land prices means that farmers cannot afford to buy additional agricultural land to consolidate their holdings.

Dhanapal, a male farmer in his early 40s, explains why it is not possible to consolidate through buying or leasing land in western Tamil Nadu where land prices have been increasing rapidly:

See, he quotes 12 lakhs (INR)Footnote 2 for this land, and another quotes 25 lakhs, because his soil is better, and he has access to road. How to consolidate? Particularly, after the agricultural lands are converted to site plots, the same is charged at twice or thrice the rate. How can we farmers buy that and use that for cultivating crops? It is very difficult to get plots next to each other. Once we decide to consolidate and buy the first two or three plots, the news will leak and the people who are in the neighbourhood will not part with their land or quote exorbitant prices that we cannot afford. See, when we bought this land, it was 10,000 (INR) per acre. I bought two acres. Then, I wanted to buy the adjacent plot also. He started quoting 20,000 (INR) without any remorse.

Demand for land from non-farm sectors (real estate, factories, roads, and other urban infrastructure), where returns are higher, generates new barriers to access land for farming. This is true of the Chennai region where land conversions from agriculture and powerful urban actors’ purchase of agricultural lands are visible in areas where we conducted our field study. In the Nilgiris, there is hardly any additional land to be bought or accessed. In the next section, we discuss how our respondents have accessed land in this context.

Accessing Land

Among the traditionally patrilineal landowning caste groups such as Kongu Vellalas, land is invariably inherited. There are, however, differences in the modes of inheritance. When there is more than one claimant to inheritance, a formal division of land and title transfer may take place even when the father is alive. For example, after the marriage of one of the sons, the father may choose to formally transfer the land. This is particularly likely when there are tensions between siblings over sharing inherited land. In case of daughters, when they need the land for certain expenses, they are given their share. In most cases, children tend to work on the parents’ farms without any formal transfer. Often, the lands are formally in the father’s name who, in turn, may jointly own it with his siblings. In such cases, access is guided more by customary rights than by formal ownership. The earnings are used or shared by the entire family.

In some cases, farmers sell the inherited land located elsewhere to buy the piece of land on which they are currently farming. Another strategy to access land is evident from the Nilgiris district, where land is jointly owned by several members of the community. One respondent in his late 30s cultivates two acres of land that has been held by his family since the time of his grandfather and perhaps even earlier. The entire village is an epicentre of high-value horticultural production and produce for leading food retail companies. Households share labour responsibilities, relying on relatives for harvesting while they take turns to guard the land from wild animals at night. The absence of clear titles implies that they cannot easily transact lands or access government schemes that require proper titles. In another case, a male farmer works on land that his wife inherited. Marriages in the areas under study are often village endogamous and patri-virilocal, unlike in Madhya Pradesh, where we also conducted fieldwork. Cross-kin marriages persist, and while on the decline, are an option for families with land that do not have sons. Such marriages ensure that the land remains within the family. A landowning family without sons may seek a groom for their daughter with an interest in farming or may shift to a non-farm business. Land management options of landowning families with daughters only is an area that requires further investigation.

The Tamil Nadu government passed the Hindu Succession (Tamil Nadu Amendment) Act in 1989 that allows daughters equal access to share in the ancestral wealth. This does not imply that all women inherit an equal share of the land. At times, as part of a dowry, land is transferred to the bride along with gold and other assets. When the husband is involved in farming, the woman’s parents tend to transfer a share of the property as it is critical to their daughter’s livelihood. We came across some cases where women farmers inherited or are likely to inherit the land that they are farming because they are the only children. The decision to transfer land to daughters, therefore, rests on a complex set of factors that involves the relative extent to which sons’ livelihoods are dependent on the land vis-à-vis that of the daughters as well as the daughters’ post-marital residence.

One Dalit farmer in western Tamil Nadu inherited land that his father received under the “Bhoodan scheme,” a government programme that involved the landlords voluntarily giving land to the landless. His father had then slowly, over time, started buying small parcels of land from neighbouring farmers. Another Dalit farmer bought his initial plot of land from the landlord where he worked as a tenant and then purchased adjoining plots over time before the land prices began to reflect demand from non-agricultural sectors.

Leasing is another means to access land. However, we found very few instances of leasing among the farmers that we interviewed. These are often lands owned by kin who are no longer in agriculture or family members who are not physically able to manage their lands. Forty-two-year-old Murugesan from Coimbatore inherited two acres through this strategy to increase access to land:

I have leased in about two acres. The owners are rich businessmen who live in Tiruppur.…I pay 3000 rupees per annum as the lease amount. I cultivate vegetables there. They have leased it out to us as we take care of the land. If it is unattended, thorny bushes will spread and people will also start to smuggle soil out of that field. So, it is mutually beneficial… The water comes from our farm. They don’t have water source there. That’s another reason they leased it to us…

The increase in land prices has helped farming households to sell a portion of their land to meet life cycle expenses such as marriage, childbirth, or illness. None of the farmers that we interviewed had bought land for agriculture in the 10 years prior to the interview. Mary, a 42-year-old Dalit woman farmer in Tiruvannamalai, also cites issues with transferring the land to her name. Her husband inherited two acres of land on his parents’ death, and she uses this land to work in a women’s collective for organic farming. Responding to a question on whether it will help her if the land is transferred to her name, she says: “Since my brothers might come for a share, the land will never be transferred in my name. But my husband is happy with the co-operative farming. So, he allows me to use it the way we want.” This raises the issue of the relationship between formal ownership and decision-making on the farm, especially through coercion rather than through any formal claim-making.

Titling, Access, and Decision-Making

Access to land may not always imply exclusive rights to make decisions on land use for young farmers, especially when their parents continue to be actively involved in farming. In most instances, farming decisions are not made by the young farmers and are guided more by norms of the active (grand) parent. The transfer of ownership or control over decision-making is also on occasion dependent on the health of the (grand) father. If the parents continue to work, most farm decisions are taken by them, the (grand) father in particular. If they are too old to work, then the son(s) tend to take charge, irrespective of whether they actually own the land.

Perumal, age 33, lives close to his parents in western Tamil Nadu; he inherited 12 acres of land from his father. He is trying to move into organic farming and has diversified into beekeeping. His father does not approve of his new ventures:

He doesn’t like me doing natural farming…He wants to just continue doing what they did—some small amount of maize, have goats, cows, and carry on. This is a point of contention between us. Like when I was getting ready to plant bananas, they sowed maize without informing me. They do things like this. But they have no problem in my being in agriculture. My idea is to grow a forest in this land, other than a small piece of land that can be used for sowing crops that we need. But their idea is different. They are not for it. They want to continue grazing the lands with goats.

Such instances, though not often reported, illustrate the nature of intergenerational tensions that young farmers face in undertaking new farming practices. Young women farmers have to navigate gender and generational challenges (more on this in the forthcoming book on young women farmers).

When the land they are to inherit is a part of their father and his siblings’ joint property, decision-making and even investment become difficult. Rani, a 36-year-old female farmer in western Tamil Nadu, illustrates this dilemma. She works on land that her husband inherited from his father, a share of which belongs to his brother. At present, the families rely on one well for irrigation. Given the declining water tables, the water is insufficient to optimally irrigate all of the land. However, since there is ambiguity around sharing the costs to be borne for a new well, Rani’s husband has not taken any initiative to sink another well. They are particularly concerned about the implications of formally partitioning the lands. They need to be assured that the new well stands on their share of land if they are to pay this cost. Otherwise, they cannot realize the full benefits of this substantial expense. Issues around joint cultivation surface in other ways, as Subbu illustrates: “Half the land is in my grandfather’s name and the remaining half belongs to my father. The borewell is on my grandfather’s side of the field. So, it is difficult to get water if we are not on the best of terms with that uncle (father’s brother). The electricity service is also shared. So, we have to work jointly.” Such relations, however, also enable the survival of the young farmer and the small farm.

Support Networks

Although farmers do not explicitly mention this reality, family labour and kin support are critical to family farming. This has become particularly important in a context of rising agricultural wages and access to paid labour. Paddy cultivation has become highly mechanized but vegetable cultivation and floriculture require considerable labour on a continuous basis. Household labour becomes critical to sustaining such cultivation. In most cases where vegetable cultivation is undertaken, we find that there is often a reliance on labour from the larger family with in-laws and siblings chipping in. “All of us in the family must work. There is no other way,” says Siva. “In (an) agricultural family, there is no alternative. We do bring in the ladies to harvest. We also pitch in. We all four have to pitch in.” His wife Jothi narrates her work schedule. “In a day, I usually go to the farm at 9 a.m. after sending the children to school. Then, I am there for the whole day. There is one or another task. Finally, in the evening, again, I have to go and usually stay there until late evening to take care of the buffaloes and cows.”

In fact, all households in the Nilgiris villages work on each other’s farms with little reliance on paid labour. Murugan has two children and runs a grocery store along with his farm. He talks about the role of his family in farm work:

I have two children. One is in the 11th year of school and the other in 8th. They are also helping on the farm. One son helps me and the other son helps my wife. They help out with all the chores. From weeding to harvesting to rearing cows, to helping the mother in the kitchen and other places, both my sons work very well. They go to a private school in the town nearby. They are very co-operative…(they) help out in the store as well. My wife does most of the work at home and at the shop. She milks the cows and helps out at the farm whenever needed. We all have to pitch in. My father and mother also pitch in. Otherwise, farming is not possible. Balancing with other businesses is also completely impossible. We cannot hire labour for all these activities. It is unviable.

In case they need to leave the village for any personal contingencies, they have to depend on neighbours or relatives to take care of the farm or the livestock. Else it becomes difficult to manage.

The embedding of farming in familial and kinship relations can be both enabling and disabling. While challenges of control over decision-making emerge when farming households access resources that kin jointly own, kin networks also act as a means of support especially during crisis or contingencies. Sudden illness or death in the family is often compensated by such support. Kin relations are expected to not only fill in for managing the farm or related activities but also take on additional responsibilities such as taking care of, educating, and marrying off the children left behind. Women farmers are even more enmeshed in such relations. Women farmer respondents, even those who own land, are embedded in a socio-cultural milieu that does not allow them to make decisions independent of the male head of the household or the extended family. While in several instances we find women contributing substantially to farming and dairy operations, they do not report to being the primary decision makers with regard to farming practices. In the case of the aforementioned Dalit women farmers’ collective in Tiruvannamalai, a civil society organization (CSO) enabled their entry into organic farming. However, following the CSO’s withdrawal, given the complex relations in which ownership, use, and spheres of reproduction are embedded, it was not appropriate to ask how the women became farmers, even when they owned land. This is also true for male farmers who are not always in a position to take decisions independently as they rely on the larger social networks that shape their cultivating practices. Rao (2017) alludes to the role of relational webs that do not allow for a linear relationship between land rights and women’s empowerment. The family farm as a unit of production tends to reproduce patriarchal relations that deter women farmers from exercising sole authority over decision-making on their farms even when they hold land titles. Youth engagement with farming cannot be understood without locating them in this complex web of social relations within which farming is rendered possible in the first place.

Learning to Farm

Contrary to popular imagination, farming is not an unskilled economic activity. Even educated youth employed in high-paying urban jobs who quit and enter into (part-time) farming with the help of kin or friends realize the importance of skills to successful farming. As mentioned earlier, all of the farmers that we spoke to come from families that are traditionally farming households. Often, they grew up on the farm learning by doing, helping their family part-time on the farm. For men, they would either continue working on the farm after completing their education or return to the occupation after working elsewhere. For women, they would work outside agriculture or stay at home helping their parents until marriage. We must note the important caste and class differences in the extent to which women in particular are socialized into farming. For instance, it is common for young women from well-off Kongu Vellala families to pursue a university education, which takes them away from farm work. Even in such cases, many of these young women would return to the land and work on their husband’s land after marriage. In two instances, young women farmers told us that they began to farm only after marriage.

Our interviews suggest that most knowledge required for farming is acquired through work on one’s family land. Tamil Nadu’s agriculture sector is one of the most commercialized in the country, made possible by considerable diffusion of Green Revolution technologies since the mid-1970s. As a result, even the older generation of farmers has been exposed to the use of new technologies, offering learning opportunities for the younger generation of farmers. In addition, young farmers also access other networks in the village or the neighbouring villages through kinship or through schooling. Importantly, thanks to the explosion in internet access, some of these young farmers belong to learning networks directed at organic farming and alternate marketing networks. Farmers use social media to seek advice about crop disease or pest infestations and to share photographs or audio files. Members of social media groups generally support such learning processes.

Apart from sharing experiences and learning from other farmers, social media also offers considerable scope for forging solidarities that transcend the traditional kinship networks. The role of government extension programmes seems to be minimal except in instances when they encourage adoption of new crops through subsidies. One farmer told us that he shifted to mulberry cultivation in response to such an initiative. Agricultural universities also share new innovations with farmers through such networks.

Apart from diversification into more profitable crops like fruits and vegetables, and tree crops such as coconut cultivation to address labour shortages, dairy has become a major source of farm income. Some government incentives, including the promotion of sericulture, contribute to innovation. Apart from such standard diversification, some farmers have also entered into organic farming, in addition to the Dalit women’s collective that we discussed earlier.

The state has one of the largest organic farming networks in the country. This diffusion is largely attributed to the missionary zeal of Nammazhvar, an agricultural scientist turned organic farmer activist. Many young farmers who trained under him became new nodes for diffusion of such practices. Two of our respondents became organic farmers through this route. Another respondent narrated his efforts to introduce new machines on his farm by interacting with his friends abroad and trying to get into buying and selling such machinery.

Critical Resources for Being a Young Farmer

Apart from land, water was the most important resource constraint for the young farmers in our study. Inability to consolidate their landholdings, lack of labour, and, on rare occasions, market prices too came up as important constraints to make farming viable. Despite the mention of prices, hardly any of our respondents mentioned the importance of access to markets as a critical resource. The exception was farmers undertaking organic farming who find perishability a concern when consumers are located in distant locations and their transport and marketing logistics are less developed. They point out that the absence of adequate marketing channels is a major constraint for sustaining the shift to organic farming. The water crisis, however, is something that looms large in most farmers’ understanding of what is most critical. This is especially true in the Chennai and Coimbatore regions where two important processes are visible. The extraction of groundwater is the primary driver for the commercialization of agriculture in the regions. In Coimbatore, its increasing extraction has led to depletion of water tables and undermined access to an assured water supply. Saravanan, 36 years old, narrates his travails in this regard:

I have eight bore-wells. None of them have enough water. It’s at 1000 feet. I had to spend 1 lakh per bore! That was very painful. As we dug one, it will work for some time. After some time, there won’t be any water. Then, I have to get another drilled. This kept on and on. In this dry season, there is no water anywhere.

In the case of villages neighbouring Chennai, irrigation has been largely tank based and supported by open wells. For a range of reasons (see Janakarajan 2004), poor maintenance since the colonial period has undermined tank-based irrigation, compounded by problems posed by urbanization and the emergence of speculative markets for land. Farmers that we spoke to attribute the absence of water to the erratic pattern of rainfall and the decline in amount of rain in recent years. “We have not had good rains in the last three or four years. How will the eri (village tank) have water?” Muthusamy, a farmer in a village near Chennai, echoes this common perception in the region. The spread of real estate activity is also seen as an issue as it disrupts traditional channels of flow into tanks and reduces incentives for community management of village tanks. While farmers have adopted drip irrigation practices, particularly in the Coimbatore region, this is still insufficient to ensure water security.

In the Tiruvannamalai region, farmers complained much less about water. Access to better prices for their produce is a more critical issue for young farmers at this field site. A few mentioned the lack of know-how for new cropping practices or physical inputs into farming to be critical. This may have to do with the norm that despite the collapse of public/government extension services, input suppliers such as fertilizer and pesticide firms often double as advisors for farming services. Water, however, assumes critical significance. While these agricultural resources are critical, farming also depends on farm households’ income diversification.

The Non-farm and the Young Farmer

The pluri-activity that the secondary data reveals about agricultural households in rural Tamil Nadu (Vijayabaskar 2017) was evident in our conversations with young farmers. Often, household members undertook many non-farm activities and occasionally secure formal sector jobs in the urban economy in the state. What we observe in general is a mutual dependence between insecure farm livelihoods and insecure non-farm diversification options. As mentioned earlier, youth often come into farming due to a loss of employment or the poor quality of waged employment outside agriculture. There are also instances when young farmers were forced to leave agriculture and find off-farm employment due to water scarcity. Selvi explains this process:

I split my time between the farm and household chores. My husband has now started working at the local grocery store. He has to go at 9 a.m. and comes back to 9 p.m. There was no income in agriculture the past two years because there was no water. The drought was very severe. If agriculture was remunerative, there was absolutely no need for him to go out… My husband and his brother were both forced to find a job outside. We pool our salaries and the income from agriculture and then split the expenses…

At the same time, respondents are also aware of the insecure nature of non-farm employment. “A company job is not permanent. Sometimes, there won’t be any job for you. As far as agriculture is concerned, if there is enough rains, there is no problem in making money,” says Karthi, a young farmer who also works in a workshop in nearby Kangeyam, western Tamil Nadu. The preference for agriculture also emanates from their perceptions of quality of work. The sentiments expressed by Subbu echo the feelings of many young farmers who have moved from factory or formal sector employment to farming. “I never liked that job. I hated the timing. The monotony of work and then a lot of regulation of when to come in, when to get out. All these were frustrating me. Only because of water [scarcity], I had to go back…”

It appears that for many engaging in farm work also means engaging in a mode of working that involves certain temporal rhythms that they feel comfortable with. At the same time, it is also a rhythm that does not equip them with the world of modern waged work that is more rigid and coercive. It is this absence of coercion—“I don’t have to listen to orders from others. I don’t have to follow strict work hours”—that appears to be attractive to those who are currently in farming. Such preferences for agricultural work, as discussed earlier, stand in contrast to the aim of many of our younger farmers to leave farming as soon as they completed their education. Nevertheless, most, if not all, farmers, especially those with young children, say that they do not want their children to make their living from farming.

The Family Farm’s Future

Though some of the young farmers do feel that farming is preferable to working in non-farm sectors as waged workers, they seldom want their children to continue in farming. As Murthy, a farmer with 20 acres of irrigated land, said of his two daughters: “I want a hi-fi life for them and not like mine.” At the time of our interview, we noticed two cars parked in front of his house. With excellent access to canal water, his farm is quite remunerative, and he has no alternate income. Even under such conditions, there is a strong sense that the family is losing out on many things that the urban offers. Another farmer, Madheswaran (42 years old), wants a different life for his son: “As long as I am around, I do not want him to suffer like I did on the fields.” This perception of suffering is tied not only to hard work on the farm but also to risk and uncertainty of income and a lack of access to consumption lifestyles opened up in a globalizing economy. Eswari, a 35-year-old farmer in Tiruppur, western Tamil Nadu, sees a move out of farming as economic mobility for her children. “No, I don’t want their lives to become ruined such as ours. We had no choice then. But now, the children have choice. They can study and get themselves a job and do well for themselves. I don’t think they need to suffer here in agriculture.” Another farmer, 39-year-old Durai, talks of how converting farmland into real estate may mean more economic security for his daughter. “…I will convert these [farm land] into residential plots, into sites… With the returns, we will do some business… I will sell the plots and build ten houses instead of agriculture, to be able to safeguard my daughter’s future.”

Combined with the fact that young men increasingly feel that a life on the farm is not desirable for most potential brides, the reproduction of the family farm in its present form in a patriarchal-patrilineal context seems unlikely. This sense of unviability is also due to the poor quality of public schooling in rural areas and a growing perception that education in expensive urban-based private schools is critical to secure non-farm futures. Murugan provides an insight into the significance of education to farming households:

I spent about Rupees 80,000 per annum per child for school fees. There is also fees for the bus. My children are not great at studies but since everyone else is sending them to school, I too am forced to. But I also believe they need some basic education—know how to sign, how to read and write, and have some basic English knowledge. One of our neighbours spends Rupees 3 lakhs on education.

Many English-medium private schools in nearby towns engage school buses and vans to pick up and drop children from these villages. Such aspirations, however, are not in line with the predominantly poor quality of non-farm employment that we observe. Under such circumstances, a combination of farm and non-farm incomes is possibly the most viable option in the near future to ensure better incomes and lives. Nevertheless, to most farmers we spoke to, modern education is the only route to social mobility and away from insecure farming futures. This also raises the question of mobilization among young farmers.

Young Farmers in Policy and Politics

Although there are no other specific policies aimed at ensuring better livelihoods for young farmers, the state and central governments have been trying to improve farm livelihoods through various measures. Subsidies for installing drip irrigation is an example. While a share of farmers have installed drip irrigation systems, they often prefer to deploy systems from private suppliers as they feel that those that the government supplies are of inadequate quality. Some farmers are also of the opinion that subsidizing drip irrigation alone is pointless without a secure water source. There are other support services aimed at innovative practices such as the adoption of integrated pest management practices and Systems of Rice Intensification (SRI) that young farmers see as useful. The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University runs a website for organic farming networks and has an incubation centre for innovations to address recent problems such as pesticide overuse or uncertain water access in farming. Unfortunately, while earlier there was a strong relationship between the formal study of agriculture and entry into agricultural support services, a few respondents are of the opinion that many of them enter into such courses in order to prepare for general public service examinations. It is also rumoured that the farmers’ lobby is resisting efforts to legislate against excessive ground water extraction as at present ground water is the important source of irrigation for farming.

In the realm of politics, while political parties do appeal to male youth and their concerns, it is primarily in terms of the absence of urban employment. The narrative is increasingly centred around which party sought to promote more employment opportunities through attracting investments or supporting specific manufacturing sectors. Simultaneously, in the realm of agriculture, politics has focused on loan waivers as well as on starting new irrigation schemes. We interviewed farmers, including women farmers, who campaigned for a new scheme to divert waters from a river for irrigation in the Coimbatore-Tiruppur region. Some farmers were also involved in addressing ecological issues in the village such as excessive use of plastics in the Erode district in western Tamil Nadu. A few of them report to use their contacts in political parties to help fellow farmers access government subsidy schemes. Their claim-making is largely through political parties and as members of a particular region or as a farming community/caste rather than as members of a youth constituency. In 2016–2017, many were sympathetic to the large-scale protests in the state around the ban on jallikattu, a traditional bull-taming sport popular among farming communities, with a few participating in the protests. They are also aware of farmers’ protests elsewhere against methane extraction projects in the Cauvery Delta, which is believed to be detrimental to the region’s agriculture. Social media networks are critical resources, not only for learning about farming practices, but also to imagine themselves to be a part of larger community of farmers. The extent to which such networks are leveraged to form an exclusive pressure group for sustaining agriculture is not clear. Given the aspirations for diversification out of agriculture and the association of manual work with low social status, mobilization around reviving agriculture is likely to be combined with demands for better educational standards and “decent” employment options outside agriculture.