The Youth Dividend and Agricultural Revival in India

Abstract

Fifty-four per cent of India’s population is under 25 years of age and, as per the 2011 Population Census, close to 34 per cent of India’s rural population belonged to the age group 15–34. While the presence of a sizeable young population is believed to offer a demographic dividend, policy efforts to realize the dividend have not met with success. Poor prospects for livelihoods within agriculture, its declining importance as a sector in the national economy, and aspirations of rural youth and their parents to find futures in nonfarm sectors suggest that, like elsewhere, agriculture today is an unlikely option for the young in India. The chapter brings the question of youth in agriculture into focus. Despite a large share of rural youth involved in farming, there is limited research or policy attention on the issues and challenges that they face around farming, non-farm opportunities, succession, and intergenerational transfer of resources and knowledge. It makes the case for improving the livelihood prospects within agriculture in a context of changing youth aspirations. We argue that a clearer understanding of the issues is essential to frame a nuanced approach to support the role of youth in agriculture and the role of agriculture in youth livelihood strategies.

This chapter is a revised and updated version of Vijayabaskar, M., S. Narayanan, and S. Srinivasan. 2018. “Agricultural revival and rural dividend.” Review of Rural Affairs, Economic and Political Weekly 53, no. 26–27: 8–16.

Introduction

Fifty-four per cent of India’s population is under 25 years of age and, by 2019, the median age of Indians was estimated to be 29 years. As per the 2011 Population Census, close to 34 per cent of India’s rural population belonged to the age group 15–34. In 2012, an estimated 56.6 per cent of rural youth in the age group 15–29 years continued to rely on agriculture, forestry, or fishing as a source of livelihood (GoI 2013a). While the presence of a sizeable young population is believed to offer a demographic dividend, policy efforts to realize the dividend have not met with success as is evident in reports of jobless growth and the poor quality of employment generated outside of agriculture. Poor prospects for livelihoods within agriculture, its declining importance as a sector in the national economy, and aspirations of rural youth and their parents to find futures in non-farm sectors suggest that, like elsewhere, agriculture today is an unlikely option for the young in India.

While youth as a distinct social and demographic category has come to occupy a significant place in recent policy imagination in India,¹ and agriculture continues to occupy policymakers, the two are rarely brought together in research and in policy. The purpose of this chapter is to bring the question of youth in agriculture into focus. What do we know about young people in farming in India? Despite a large share of rural youth involved in farming, there is limited research or policy attention on the issues and challenges that they face around farming, non-farm opportunities, succession, and intergenerational transfer of resources and knowledge. This is reflected in data that are not always available by age, making it challenging to draw inferences specific to young farmers, even more so with respect to young women farmers.² We draw on statistical data and scholarly material to examine the situation of young farmers in India. Although the paper implicitly understands a farmer as someone with access (ownership, shared, renting, etc.) to land (or a productive resource) who invests a large part of their time and labour in farming, actual definitions are quite varied.

Consistent with the focus of the research on which the chapter is based and of this collection, we adopt a youth perspective to understand the generational dimensions of the social reproduction of rural communities, the lives of young people within the agrarian economy, their paradoxical (apparent) turn away from farming in this era of mass rural un(der)employment (Cuervo and Wyn 2012), and youth subjectivities. In doing so, the chapter also engages with developmentalist and policy discourse that views the movement of people out of agriculture as a transitional imperative (Chenery 1979), even as global sustainability discourses place the family farm as a bulwark against incursions of industrialized and corporatized agriculture (McMichael 2008; Food and Agricultural Organisation n.d.). Despite the realization that conventional routes of labour transition out of agriculture are not available to many, policy initiatives to make agriculture attractive for youth livelihoods have been few and far between. The purpose of the chapter is not to argue that all (rural) youth undertake or remain in farming, but it is to make a case for improving the livelihood prospects within agriculture in a context of changing youth aspirations. We argue that a clearer understanding of the issues is essential to frame a nuanced approach to support the role of youth in agriculture and the role of agriculture in youth livelihood strategies.

The chapter is organized as follows. In the following section, we draw on national farm household surveys to map the demographic profile of (young) farmers in India. Section “Staying in, Exiting, and Entering Agriculture: A Review of Evidence” draws on the literature on farmer exit, entry, and continuation in agriculture, to provide a nuanced understanding of the generational crisis in Indian farming. In section “Structural and Policy Issues Within Agriculture,” we turn to the structural problems that youth in farming confront in securing “decent” lives. Section “What Next for Young Farmers?” reflects on the policy crossroads and section “Empirical Study of Young Farmers” sets up the next two chapters that are based on original interviews with young farmers in Tamil Nadu (TN) and Madhya Pradesh (MP).

Socio-Demographic Profile of Farmers in India

Agriculture and allied sectors on which 54.6 per cent of India’s workforce relies have registered a rapid decline as a share of national income, accounting for only 16.1 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2014–2015.^3,4 Evidence from two NSS rounds suggests that over the decade spanning from 2002–2003 to 2013,⁵ the median and the mean age of the head of an agricultural household have increased by around two years to 39.3 years for the mean and to 38 years for the median, indicating that heads of agricultural households are now older. However, the change does not seem rapid (Vijayabaskar et al. 2018). Further, they find that a greater proportion of youth among the scheduled tribes (STs) are likely to farm than those from the scheduled castes (SCs)/other backward castes;⁶ young people from other general castes are comparatively much less likely to be farmers. These differences seem to disappear among the older cohorts, but only beyond 65 years. Gender gaps exist, and the proportion of women who participate in farming is consistently less than those of men in farming. It seems that while the generational crisis in farming is not yet evident in terms of the average age of a farmer, there is a distinct pattern of rural youth, even in farm households, being disproportionately disengaged from farming (Table 8.1). This is apparent from other data sources such as the Census and NSS Employment-Unemployment Surveys.

Table 8.1 Selected indicators of farmers and agricultural households

In terms of education, in 2012–2013, it was less likely that a farmer would be illiterate or completed just primary school or less and it was more likely that a farmer in 2012–13 had educational attainment of high school or beyond, relative to 2002–2003 (Vijayabaskar et al. 2018). This might reflect a general trend of a greater number of people who are now studying more, so that farmers in 2012–2013 are on average more educated than they were a decade earlier. This trend seems to undermine conventional understandings about Indian agriculture that attributes its relatively lower productivity to farmers’ lower literacy levels.

There is also an indication that there is a lower preference for formal training in agriculture among youth (Fig. 8.1). Among the younger cohorts, technical training in agriculture accounts for the lowest share of all those with technical degrees, while those for engineering are much larger among the younger cohort relative to older age cohorts. The current preference for training in engineering over training in agriculture is likely a reflection of the declining importance of agriculture. While this pattern is the same for men and women, the difference between cohorts in the proportion trained in agriculture relative to engineering is larger for men. The gender gap appears larger for agriculture than for other disciplines, including engineering. At the same time, even in the absence of data, it would not be hard to guess that graduates from agricultural universities rarely enter farming, choosing instead to either work in sectors unrelated to agriculture or work in downstream agribusinesses or agricultural financial institutions.

Fig. 8.1

Technical education in agriculture, engineering, and teaching compared (Source: Computed from data of the Government of India (GoI) 2016)

Staying in, Exiting, and Entering Agriculture: A Review of Evidence

An oft-cited statistic from the NSS 59th Round Survey of Farm Households (2002–2003) is that as many as 40 per cent of respondents said they would quit farming if they had a choice.⁷ Although the survey did not focus on youth, it suggested that, in general, low profitability and risk associated with incomes were the main reasons cited for the preference to exit from farming. Researchers have noted that this preference is higher among resource-constrained farmers (Agarwal and Agrawal 2017; Birthal et al. 2015). Exit preference was also correlated negatively with the age of the farmer-respondent (Agarwal and Agrawal 2017). But who leaves, who stays behind, and who enters is quite complex and not always captured in macro-level data (Sharma and Bhaduri 2009). Micro-level studies suggest that there are significant differences in patterns of youth engagement with farming across space, caste, and class.

Sharma (2007) and Sharma and Bhaduri (2009) offer some insights based on what is perhaps the only survey on the youth question in Indian agriculture. Sharma’s (2007) study, based on a sample of 1609 youth in the age group 18–30 years from across 13 states, found that part-time farming is a rising trend, especially among small⁸ and medium-scale farmers who tend to combine farming with non-farm activities, including urban activities based on seasonal migration. Youth from large landholding families tend to be full-time farmers given the economies of scale that large landholding affords. While youth from small and marginal farm families are mobile, given the limited prospects in farming, such families are also able to lease more land.

Sharma (2007) also points out that those who report to be full-time farmers were older than part-time farmers, while youth reporting no involvement in farming were younger than both with a mean age of 24.4 years. This could imply that perhaps as one grows older and has one’s own family, many return to full-time farming. The other possibility is that youth return to take up farming when non-farm options are unattractive. Djurfeldt et al. (2008) argue based on evidence from Tamil Nadu that with education and industrial employment opportunities, landless and large landowning families exit farming at a faster rate, which results in less skewed distribution of land and rural incomes. Leasing in or buying of land then becomes possible for small and marginal landowning families, thus consolidating family farming. Sharma (2007) and Sharma and Bhaduri (2009) suggest that part-time farmers and youth not involved in farming are generally from higher castes, have a higher number of years of schooling, and have more employable skills. These youth are also generally from villages close to urban areas, indicating the impact of urbanization on deagrarianization (see also Djurfeldt et al. 2008). These patterns seem to be stronger in regions with a low value of agricultural production per capita and in villages close to towns. While proximity to markets is a key factor affecting returns to farming and in retaining youth in rural areas, it also has the effect of enabling youth to take up more non-farm activities. As Krishna (2017) demonstrates, villages that are at a distance of more than five kilometres from a town or a city tend to be relatively poorer than those that are located closer to urban settlements.

At the individual or household level, the pattern is more evident among castes higher in the social hierarchy, the better educated, and youth with non-farm skills. Interestingly, small, marginal, and large landholders show an inclination to withdraw from farming. While small and marginal farmers are perhaps, at least in part, being pushed out of farming, large farmers appear to take advantage of non-farm opportunities, being better off in terms of education and access to financial capital.

In Bundelkhand, in northern India, Narain et al. (2016) found that marginal farmers are more likely to want to exit farming than the medium landholding size class. Somewhat differently, in Gujarat, Patel (1985) studied the aspirations of youth to emigrate and found that neither the rich and secure nor the dismally poor showed a propensity to emigrate, albeit for different reasons; it was people in the “middle” who were mobile. She attributes this to pressure on land. Given the difficulties of land reform, the pressure on land made the surplus population restive (Patel 1985). Given that the study is somewhat dated, it is possible that the profiles of who wants to leave and who stay are today different from the 1980s.

Jeffrey (2010) in his ethnographic work in Uttar Pradesh describes the emergence and experiences of the “educated unemployed,” a generation of youth from rural landowning families. Better-off landowning families increasingly send their children away for urban education and jobs, a phenomenon also noted by Balagopal (2011) in the context of coastal Andhra Pradesh in the 1980s. Many of these youth cannot find jobs and, given their newfound (educational) status, are reluctant to engage in farming. At the same time in relatively developed states such as Tamil Nadu and Punjab where youth withdrawal from agriculture may be occurring at a faster pace than in other states due to urbanization and other related processes, we are beginning to witness a small stream of well-educated, urban middle-class youth turning to farming as a lifestyle choice or as an enterprise (Shandal 2016).⁹ Within agriculture, field research shows that youth tend to find certain activities more attractive than others (such as dairy, poultry, orchards, and horticulture); these are areas where returns are relatively higher. However, youth in rural areas believe that cultivation of field crops is the least difficult to enter, given that one does not require costly investments upfront if land is available (Umunnakwe et al. 2014). Studies on contract farming and contemporary supply chains suggest that, on average, younger farmers are more likely to participate in new marketing forms (Singh 2012). Overall, it appears that certain sub-sectors within agriculture appeal more to youth than others, but access to such avenues may be limited.

Village studies also lend support to the entry of segments of lower castes into farming. For example, Rao and Nair (2003) conclude that in Andhra Pradesh, the landownership pattern among caste groups has undergone a significant change—while the dominant caste has lost land, the backward and scheduled castes are reported to have gained land. Sharma (2007) notes that in Bihar, the traditional farming castes like the Bhumihars were selling land, and backward caste groups such as Yadavs were increasingly acquiring land. While such land transfers can seem socially progressive, the low returns to agriculture, particularly in relative terms and the growing crisis in the sector (Vasavi 2012; Deshpande and Arora 2010), may warrant a different reading of this phenomenon, wherein the lower castes are trapped in low-return occupations. Movement out of agriculture is also tied to non-economic aspirations. Agricultural labour is ascribed low status in the caste-based division of labour, historically associated with scheduled castes and other castes lower in the caste hierarchy. Upward mobility, as Tilche (2016) notes in her study of the Patidars in Gujarat, is therefore associated with movement out of such manual work. Farm work may therefore not be appealing.

Structural and Policy Issues Within Agriculture

Existing studies thus identify several recurring themes that emerge in the context of youth entry and continuation in agriculture, some better understood than others. A few of these can be characterized as structural conditions associated with agriculture. Unremunerative agriculture constitutes one of the strongest push factors prompting exit from the sector. Research has confirmed the negative effects of the Green Revolution,¹⁰ such as depletion in quality of soils, increase in use of purchased inputs, and extensive extraction of ground water through private investments (Reddy and Mishra 2009), has led to a process of capital intensification of agricultural production without commensurate increases in yields and/or returns. Accompanying these agro-ecological factors are a series of policy shifts, such as reduced public investments in research and development, and a lack of technological breakthroughs in rain-fed and drought-prone agriculture, which account for 60 per cent of cropped area. For much of the post-reform period, terms of trade were against agriculture except for the period from 2004–2005 to 2010–2011 when high world prices led to agricultural produce prices remaining higher relative to non-agricultural produce (Dev and Rao 2015).

Unviable Size of Holdings

The shrinking size of landholdings has been a major structural factor contributing to smallholder vulnerability. The average size of a landholding has declined by half, from 2.28 hectares (ha) in 1970–1971 to 1.16 ha in 2010–2011 (NABARD 2014). There has also been a steady increase in the share of marginal and small landholdings at the national level, and at present, this segment accounts for 85 per cent of all operational landholdings in the country, although accounting for only 44 per cent of total area being cultivated. Marginal landholdings increased from 9 per cent of lands cultivated in 1970–1971 to 22 per cent in 2010–2011. Trends indicate that within each farm size category—marginal, small, medium, and large—the landholding size has declined, implying that there has been no consolidation of holdings in any size category.

This reduction in operational land holding size has been partly driven by a successive division (sub-division) of inherited land in the countryside. Other factors such as distress sales that we discuss later have also been observed. Notwithstanding the evidence that smallholders in India might be more productive or efficient (Gaurav and Mishra 2015, for example), there is ample evidence that small holdings in India are smaller than the threshold size and hence unviable, a point that the Government of India recognizes explicitly: “The results of the 70th Round NSS show that positive net monthly income—i.e., difference between income from all sources and consumption expenditure—accrues only to farmers with landholdings of more than 1 hectare” (GoI 2016, 15).

While the continued non-viability of small-scale farming and of fragmentation of land push children from such families to move out of farming in search of urban employment, they pose an obstacle even to those (youth) who might be inclined to farm. Entry options into farming among lower caste youth that we noted earlier may not necessarily constitute upward mobility in a phase of relative decline in incomes from agriculture.

Rural Land Markets and Land Use

An important factor that contributes to reproduction of marginal landholdings and hence to agrarian distress is the nature of emerging land markets. While unviable landholdings are constraining, there is little evidence of land consolidation due to either buying or leasing. A major factor that may have prevented owners of unviable landholdings (or for new entrants into farming) from accessing additional land is the rise in costs of rural land, especially in relation to returns from agriculture. As Chakravorty (2013) demonstrates, there has been an increase in the levels of activity in rural land markets since the late 1990s, followed by a tremendous increase in rural land prices during the last 10 years or so. Rising values of land due to growth in real estate activity as a consequence of higher incomes and demand for real estate from overseas Indians attract buyers who invest in land and keep prices high. Investment of black money is another major source of demand for land (GoI 2012). The expansion in credit for housing in post-reform India has also increased effective demand for land and given the inelastic supply of land, generated price increases. As a result of such demand, Chakravorty (2013) contends that rural land prices in states such as Punjab are higher by 20–30 times (one of the highest in the world) when compared to prices that would reflect agricultural productivity. Rural land values are, therefore, determined more outside of agriculture. Under such conditions of financialization of land, active land markets may not always generate outcomes that are welfare enhancing for marginal and small farmers (Vijayabaskar and Menon 2017). One consequence of rising land prices is that farmers have limited capacity to expand their farms, and young (and new) farmers are put at a huge disadvantage. These entry barriers are even more acute for women, who typically do not have access to land of their own. Although laws provide for inheritance, it seems to be the norm that women do not stake a claim in order to preserve their relationship with their brothers, often justifying their stand by rationalizing that if they did stake a claim, the already small landholdings would become non-viable (see Agarwal 1994, for instance).

In the absence of proper insurance markets and in anticipation of rising prices, land is seen as an important hedge against risk and hence property owners do not want to sell, even if their own capacity to invest in land to improve returns is limited. More than 60 per cent of Sharma and Bhaduri’s (2009) respondents reveal that while complete withdrawal from farming was high on their agenda, selling land was the last option. The ties to land are maintained possibly because one cannot completely rely on non-farm opportunities, but also because of social meanings ascribed to owning land, apart from expectations of land price hikes. More than a third of their young respondents mention that they would like their children to continue farming, not only because there was a lack of opportunities elsewhere, but because that is what they had done for generations. In these instances, land does not pass to more efficient farmers; it is not the case that its sale offers an exit option for farmers. Demand for land is therefore not tied to desire to pursue farming as also pointed out in a study of rural Telangana (Jakimow et al. 2013).

In extreme cases, however, in the absence of effective policy interventions to address price and production risks, farmers end up relying on distress sales as micro-level studies of rural land markets reveal (Krishnaji 1991; Sarap 1995, 1998). Farming households also respond to risks by diversifying their livelihood options. Rather than invest in land to improve or stabilize returns from agriculture, they may consider investing in their children’s education or to access non-farm employment, and hence a possible future career outside agriculture. Even before the onset of agrarian crisis and relative decline in agricultural incomes vis-à-vis incomes from other sectors, agriculture surplus was being invested outside agriculture rather than towards expansion in agricultural investments (Balagopal 2011). Diversification has seldom meant economic mobility or reduced vulnerability for most rural youth.

Diversification Sans Mobility?

NSSO’s Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households for the crop year 2012–2013 indicates that 57.8 per cent of households have at least one member who is self-employed in farming. Although a large share of households continue to rely on agriculture, many do not rely exclusively on agriculture; 68.3 per cent reported farming to be their main source of income in that year.¹¹ On average, agriculture accounted for only 60 per cent of the income for farm households (NSS, 70th Round). While income from crop cultivation and animal farming account for 48 per cent and 12 per cent of income, respectively, as much as 32 per cent of income in the household is derived from wages, working on others’ farms as well as off-farm (computed using data from the NSS 70th Round). These suggest that rural is no longer synonymous with agriculture.

Over the past two decades, the contribution of the non-farm sector in rural GDP has grown significantly—from 37 per cent in 1980–1981 to 65 per cent in 2009–2010—accompanied by a marked increase in the share of non-farm employment over the same period (Papola 2013; Reddy et al. 2014). However, the quality of employment outside agriculture has been poor, marked by either poor wages or incomes. In 2009–2010, salaried employment constituted only 20 per cent of all jobs in the non-farm sector (Himanshu et al. 2013). Sectorally, the bulk of employment generation has been in the construction sector, which accounted for 35.74 per cent of all jobs created between 1990–1991 and 2015–2016 (Bhattacharya 2018). Two aspects of the employment boom in construction are worth noting. First, it tends to employ men in larger numbers and relatively more mobile men at that. Second, employment is insecure and casual for most jobs. Thus, while the rural non-farm sector is no longer a “residual” employer, it offers “decent” exit options only for a few (Jodhka and Kumar 2017). Studies also suggest that occupational mobility is lowest in agriculture and allied occupations, and half of all children of farmers end up being farmers themselves (Motiram and Singh 2010). While the ratio of non-agricultural productivity to agricultural productivity has increased from 3.97 per cent to 5.83 per cent from 1983–1984 to 2011–2012, the construction sector has a labour productivity that is only 58 per cent higher than that in agriculture.

As a way out of agriculture, rural households are investing considerably in education. According to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2014–2015, 24.3 per cent of youth in the age group 18–23 years are in some form of higher education compared to 19.4 per cent reported in 2010–2011. Such investments have, however, not been backed by adequate openings in the job market. Despite having registered one of the highest growth rates since 2000, the growth in India continues to be accompanied by concerns of joblessness (GoI 2018),¹² especially among the educated and those from rural households. According to a Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India survey (GoI, 2013, 43): “Every 1 person out of 3 persons who is holding a graduate degree and above is found to be unemployed based on the survey results… for the age group 15–29 years. In rural areas the unemployment rate among graduates and above for the age group 15–29 years is estimated to be 36.6 percent whereas in urban areas the same is 26.5 percent.”

This clearly indicates an emerging crisis in employment with available employment opportunities not commensurate with rural youth aspirations (Cross 2009; Jeffrey 2010; Jeffrey et al. 2005a and 2005b; Jeffrey and Young 2012). Young men from rural farm backgrounds often engage in “timepass,” that is, passing one’s time for its own sake, and enrol in one course after another waiting for their preferred employment to materialize (Jeffrey 2010). This is also tied to quality of education and first-generation learning in the absence of social networks in landing them jobs (Jakimow et al. 2013). Apart from the inferior status assigned to farm work as discussed earlier, the desire to move out of the rural is, therefore, also tied to lack of access to quality education and to networks that facilitate access to better non-farm options. Such aspirations are belied by a lack of commensurate employment for the educated, continuing to be in farming in a context of growing income differentials between agriculture and non-agricultural sectors. In this context, micro-level studies (such as Anandhi et al. 2002; Srinivasan 2015) point to a growing crisis of masculinity among rural young men, who, unlike older generations of men, are not able to assert their identity based in farming. The unattractiveness of farming is further fuelled by the desire of rural women to marry out of farming (Bourdieu 2008; Srinivasan 2015). Overall, youth aspirations in rural areas are often not built around farming but around strategies for a way out of agriculture.

What Next for Young Farmers?

The discussion so far pieced together information from secondary sources highlighting that there is scarce attention to young farmers in policy and research. With an agrarian crisis, an ageing farm population, and a youth bulge, can youth revive the prospects of agriculture in India? And can agriculture revive hopes of youth? The agrarian crisis, precipitated by the non-viability of small-scale family farming (low productivity, poor market returns, low soil fertility, water scarcity, high levels of indebtedness), lack of public investment, and the continued dependence of a significant share of the population on agriculture for their livelihoods, is in reality also a demographic crisis as (rural) youth have not been able to effectively move out or move into agriculture in economically secure ways. If India is to reap dividends from the demographic youth bulge, the revival of quality rural employment—in particular of prospects in agriculture—will be crucial. Likewise, prospects in agriculture cannot be revived without addressing the youth question.

A youth or generational perspective demonstrates that we do not know much about youth in agriculture—their aspirations, variations across regions, how they access resources (land, knowledge, and skills), challenges they encounter, and so on—information that is necessary to offer workable strategies. The discussion highlights the need for not only greater visibility of young farmers in research and policy, but also more importantly an intersectional approach to reviving agriculture, tackling rural poverty, and youth livelihoods.

Agarwal and Agrawal (2017) note that governments tend to assume that farmers would be better off in cities while emergent farmers’ movements presume that all farmers want to farm. The evidence on farmers’ preferences for exit is clearly more nuanced. Further, rural households are already showing through their adaptation strategies what may be viable. Increasingly, households are combining incomes from self-cultivation with incomes from non-farm employment and business. Declining employment elasticity in agriculture (Majumdar 2017) also implies that households can undertake agriculture without much labour expenditure, allowing pluri-activities. Creating non-farm employment in rural areas would enable youth to forge livelihood pathways in the countryside and in turn, contribute to agriculture’s revival (Chand et al. 2011). Similarly, ruralization of manufacturing as noted by Ghani et al. (2012) may also contribute to a “high road” to rural diversification. Efforts are necessary to quell the growing rural-urban disparities in access to quality healthcare and education that further accentuate vulnerabilities emanating from the agricultural sector.

Possibly in response to the realization that all is not well with the non-agrarian economy in terms of employment, the government launched a new project in 2015, “Attracting and Retaining Youth in Agriculture” (ARYA), supported by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and implemented by Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK), a public institution meant to provide technical support to agriculture.¹³ The National Commission of Farmers (NCF), constituted in 2004, was tasked with recommending measures to address agrarian distress. One of the sub-tasks was to suggest strategies to attract and retain youth in agriculture. In each of the six reports that the NCF submitted between 2004 and 2006, there is an explicit recognition of youth aspirations to move out of agriculture. The commission, however, restricted itself to suggesting a role for youth employment in custom hiring and skilling for animal rearing.

A sectoral and an economistic approach to integrating youth into farming may not work given the complex set of factors that render the agrarian rural inferior. The challenge may also involve revalourization of agricultural work without valourizing caste. While improved returns may provide some incentives, in the absence of a reversal of social norms around labour in agriculture, such policies may be socially regressive. In addition, the gender-neutral category of youth implicitly refers to young men.¹⁴ This often leads to the neglect of young women in policies directed towards youth. Inheritance laws and social norms around land rights also marginalize young women from policies that focus on youth participation in farming. The family farm as conceived in the conventional sense cannot be the unit of organizing production; a flexible arrangement that can transcend sectors but is spatially located in the rural will have to be envisaged. Further, exploring new forms of collective organization of the agrarian economy may potentially weaken caste hierarchies, status, and patriarchal relations that undergird the family farm.

Finally, there is a strong push from youth themselves to revive farming as evident, for example, in a growing number of urban youth embracing farming out of their own volition. Political activity around access to land has also witnessed a rise recently, for example, in Jignesh Mevani’s land to Dalits agenda (The Outlook 2018) and the Land March in Maharashtra (Dhawale 2018).

The problems that youth face in agriculture must be given more serious attention than has been the case in recent research and policy debate. This would entail a move away from viewing agriculture not merely as a source of surplus labour, but as a sector that generates social values around land and work that cannot be reduced to monetary valuations. To accomplish these, we need to understand better the choices that young farmers, both men and women, make in terms of choosing to be or become farmers. In order to do so, youth have to be a priority in policy and research—in the ways that questions are framed, data are collected, and solutions sought.

Empirical Study of Young Farmers

Inspired by the current (lack of) focus on young farmers in research and policy in India, the authors set out to gather information based on primary research on the lived realities of young farmers in two different contexts: the highly urbanized southern state of Tamil Nadu (TN) and the primarily agrarian central state of Madhya Pradesh (MP). Despite both states contributing significantly to the agricultural GDP of India and being major producers of several crops, the contrasts between their agrarian prospects for youth are stark. In the remainder of this section, we discuss salient aspects of the state’s agrarian context that shape youth’s involvement in farming. Similar to the discussion thus far at the national level, while there is a lot of material on agrarian and non-farm contexts, there is limited literature on rural youth and young farmers per se (Image 8.1).

Image 8.1

Sites for the becoming a young farmer study in Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, India

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu represents one end of the national spectrum with probably the best parameters in terms of what can be referred to as structural transformation (Tamil Nadu Human Development Report 2017, TNHDR 2017 hereafter). It has the second lowest share of income and employment from agriculture among the larger states, the highest share of employment in manufacturing among major states, and a vibrant services sector. The diversification of economic structure and employment has been accompanied by one of the highest levels of access to tertiary education and urbanization (with 50 per cent of the population living in urban areas).

An important feature of its urbanization is that it is relatively better diffused among other urbanized states with a wider spread of small and medium towns in the state. This spread of urbanization is likely to have shaped the aspirations and opportunity structures for rural youth. Our contention is that these factors have not only significantly shaped youth aspirations and their dispensation towards farming but also generated economic and social incentives that shape such aspirations.

Although agriculture accounts for less than 8 per cent of the state’s income, 33 per cent of rural youth continue to be employed in the sector. This 33 per cent is the second lowest in the country among major states, indicating a higher diversification of livelihoods. Looking at the break-up of those dependent on agriculture into cultivators and agricultural labourers, there has been a steep fall in both the share and absolute number of cultivators since 1991 (TNHDR 2017), suggesting a movement away from working on one’s own land among this section of the workforce. Nearly 92 per cent of operational landholdings are in the marginal and small category and the share of total land under such operational holdings has actually increased from 55.6 to 60.6 per cent between 2000 and 2010–2011. The Agricultural Census 2015–2016 also slots Tamil Nadu with one of the lowest average land holding sizes (0.75 ha.) among the major states in the country. Normally such a decline is attributed to fragmentation due to partible inheritance apart from the development of capitalist relations that leads to differentiation within the cultivators. In Tamil Nadu, given the fact that it has witnessed a rapid decline in fertility levels (TNHDR 2017), the role of sub-division and fragmentation due to inheritance is likely to have played a lesser role. There is some evidence of the role of regional political mobilization in paving way for other modes of land transfers (Jeyaranjan 2020).

Although the share of agriculture in the state’s Net State Domestic Product is half that of the national average, yields for most of its major crops including paddy, sugarcane, and horticultural produce is one of the highest in the country. The rapid diffusion of Green Revolution technologies in the state paved the way for the emergence of a strong farmers’ movement in the 1970s and 1980s that mobilized around better prices and subsidies for an input-intensive production regime. The demands led to the provision of free electricity, which in turn led to intensive production and surplus generation through extraction of ground water using electric pumps. Even as it enabled a set of dryland farmers to enhance their livelihoods, excessive extraction of ground water over time, declining water tables, and growing capital intensity have led to an agro-ecological crisis and the undermining of agricultural livelihoods. Extraction in nearly two-thirds of the ground water blocks in the state exceeds the replenishment levels. Despite improvements in yields, the median annual income for a farmer in Tamil Nadu in 2012–2013 was less than INR 20,000¹⁵ (net of cultivation costs) and was one among the 17 states with such poor returns to agriculture. Such poor incomes from agriculture are particularly striking in a state that has the third highest per capita income among major states in the country (TNHDR 2017). This means that significant sections of cultivators are not in a position to reproduce themselves solely through farming. It also implies that for the next generation, there are incentives not only to diversify but also to move out of agriculture. Rural households in Tamil Nadu are some of the most diversified and least dependent on agriculture in the country (Vijayabaskar and Balagopal 2019)

Income from wages and non-farm businesses account for higher incomes than that from cultivation. Importantly, income from dairy is one of the highest among all Indian states. Diversification out of agriculture has been an important livelihood strategy. While the construction sector has accounted for bulk of employment outside agriculture in the last decade and a half (TNHDR 2017), the state has also witnessed considerable investments by households in higher education. According to report of the 2014–2015 All India Survey on Higher Education, 45.2 per cent of Tamil Nadu’s youth in the age group 18–23 years are engaged in some form of higher education. The highest by a sizeable difference among all major states. Importantly, the rate, although lower than that of the overall category, is also relatively higher for the marginalized scheduled caste youth, suggesting a more broad-based increase in investments in education across castes. A lack of adequate employment opportunities for the educated in the non-rural sectors, other than in construction and low-end services (drivers, security guards), implies that the exit options for large sections of cultivating households, despite investments in higher education, are fraught with uncertainties.

Another important dimension has been the relatively strong social security net in Tamil Nadu. Although agricultural wages have increased across the country, it is one of the states where the real wages started increasing much earlier. In addition, the implementation of an effective public distribution system (PDS) that allowed for households to access 20 kilogrammes of free rice and other provisions means that labouring households do not have to depend exclusively on their wage incomes for access to food. This state-proffered food support has meant that agricultural households are free to seek other employment. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has also been effectively implemented in the state, allowing for increases in real incomes (Kalaiyarasan and Vijayabaskar 2021). Accompanied by better access to education and rural-urban linkages, diversification into non-farm employment is believed by some of the farmers to have undermined their prospects in agriculture. Such aspects of the regional economy play an important role in the processes of entry into farming, being in agriculture, and perceptions of what it is to remain in agriculture.

Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh (MP) is a contrast to Tamil Nadu in a number of ways. The fifth most populous state in India, MP has a population of 72.6 million, of which nearly 72 per cent live in rural areas. Around 21 per cent of the population is tribal (belonging to scheduled tribes, i.e., STs), relative to 8.6 per cent in India. An estimated 15.6 per cent of MP’s population belongs to the scheduled castes (SCs), a share compared to the country average (16.6 per cent). MP has been one of the more backward states within India. Unlike Tamil Nadu, it lags behind on several key human development indicators and has high rates of infant mortality (54 per 1000) and child malnutrition (57.9 per cent of those under five years are underweight) and lower life expectancy—64.2 years versus the Indian average (67.9 years). The rates of rural poverty are high as well at 35.74 per cent compared to 25.7 per cent in rural India as a whole in 2011–2012 (Bhanumurthy et al. 2016); rural poverty among the historically disadvantaged communities is even higher at 55 per cent and 41 per cent among STs and SCs, respectively. Being landlocked and with 29 per cent of the land covered in forests, MP does not possess some of the location advantages of its neighbours, or indeed Tamil Nadu, in terms of access to ports and large cities. It continues to be primarily agrarian with as much as 34 per cent of the state’s GDP coming from agriculture (in 2013–2014) and over 70 per cent of the workforce still dependent on agriculture. In the 2012–2013 survey of agricultural households—in contrast to Tamil Nadu where agricultural households derived only 43 per cent from cultivation and animal rearing—in MP, this figure was 76 per cent, suggesting that diversification out of agriculture is fairly limited (Table 8.1).

In agriculture, however, MP has stood out among the major Indian states for having the highest growth rates in agricultural GDP over the past decade. It is among the largest producers of wheat, soyabean, maize, gram, canola, and mustard (Government of India 2017). Commentators note that this spectacular increase in agricultural GDP in the context of a widespread crisis in Indian agriculture is attributable to expanding irrigation (both major and minor irrigation, such as canals and wells) and a government procurement system that assures a minimum price to farmers, notably for wheat (Gulati et al. 2017). Some point out that due to better infrastructure in terms of road access, farmers have now been able to monetize their produce more easily (Gulati et al. 2017). For both wheat and soyabean, MP has emerged as an important source of produce for processors of flour and solvent extractors, respectively. Recent years have also seen the emergence of several not-for-profit initiatives by firms as part of their corporate social responsibility obligations.¹⁶

Notwithstanding this success, agriculture in MP faces challenges. Only about half the land is under cultivation and less than a third of cultivated land is cultivated more than once a year. According to the Agricultural Census of 2015–2016, there are 10 million operational holdings in the state covering 15.67 million hectares. The average size of operational holdings is therefore 1.567 hectares, much higher than in Tamil Nadu. In 1970–1971, the average size of operational holdings was over four hectares and it is evident that landholding size here is declining rapidly like in most other Indian states, mainly on account of sub-division. Between 2010 and 2015, MP registered among the largest increases in India in the number of operational holdings (Government of India 2020). As much as 71.46 per cent of the operational holdings counted in the Agricultural Census of 2015 are small or marginal (under two hectares). The presence of a large ST population adds another dimension to understanding MP’s agrarian context. The Constitution of India mandates that land in tribal areas (denoted as Schedule 5/6 areas) cannot pass hands to non-tribals, as a safeguard to prevent land alienation. MP’s forests are also governed by the Forest Rights Act, which shapes access to forests and exerts an influence on both agriculture and livestock practices.¹⁷

Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh thus offer interesting contrasts from the perspective of youth in agriculture, shaping their decisions to become and be farmers. Based on in-depth interviews with 98 young farmers (18–46 years old), the next two chapters analyse the experiences and lived realities of becoming and being young farmers in these two states. Given that there is considerable variation in the agricultural contexts within each state, our findings are not intended to offer generalizations. What they do allow us to do by privileging young farmers’ voices is to add much-needed insights into young farmers’ experiences, the ways in which supply, demand economic factors, and sociocultural factors (norms around gender roles, marriage, inheritance, aspirations) interact in shaping the lived realities of young farmers, and hopefully inform further research, policies, and programmes to support becoming young farmers.

By way of concluding this chapter, we offer a few insights from the research conducted in the two states. The biggest challenge facing young farmers and the future of farming more generally is the declining land size and soil and water depletion. How climate change will further impact farming prospects needs to be studied urgently. While the proportion of the population dependent on farming varies as exemplified in the choice of the two states, it seems that availability of viable non-farm livelihood opportunities will be key to the continuation of farming. The extent of urbanization and the development of non-farm, urban sectors for employment generation offer (or not) exit options as evident in the contrasting cases of Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. While we do not focus specifically on young women farmers (we do this elsewhere as it warrants a thorough focus), the challenges posed by sociocultural norms and high levels of gender discrimination become immediately evident in studying their farming experiences. Finally, the interviews offer much-needed evidence to counter the misconception that young people leave farming, never to return. Farming is a process marked by years in school, disinterest, urban aspirations, marriage, family responsibilities, different livelihood and income strategies, and migration.