Centre’s new year wishlist: A garden for every farmer

Remember the feel-good picture postcard scene with a farmer’s hut and his fruit and vegetable patch and cattle-poultry corner? Research...

Remember the feel-good picture postcard scene with a farmer’s hut and his fruit and vegetable patch and cattle-poultry corner? Research has shown that that this small homestead garden, now almost extinct in the Indian countryside, is vital for the farmer’s prosperity and above-BPL status. The Centre is now asking state governments to frame a policy that will ensure landless and marginal farmers get small plots of land around their houses.

In the gamut of land reforms proposed yesterday by the Centre, the allotment of homestead and garden plots is the freshest. At the state ministers’ conference, most states declared themselves amenable to the idea; so long, they had been allotting land only enough for a house to landless farmers.

The decision is in keeping with the findings of the Seattle-based Rural Development Institute (RDI). Based on research in Karnataka and West Bengal and comparative land reform experience in more than 30 countries, the RDI strongly recommended that all states allot larger homestead plots to the rural poor to improve their income and nutritional status.

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Globally, only 50 per cent of the landless farmer’s income is found to come from labour charges; the rest comes from the produce, milk and poultry of his homestead garden. ‘‘These numbers are significant. They show that these small gardens can help the poorest of poor farmers augment their food supply and improve access to credit,’’ said Union Agriculture Minister Rajnath Singh.

The homestead model has already been successfully implemented in Russia, where 80 per cent of the food produce comes from the homestead gardens. India makes for a strong case for the implementation of the model because as much as 11 per cent of rural households are landless and 60 per cent of all farmers are now marginal farmers.

Among the states, Karnataka has taken the lead to prepare a concept paper on the subject. Thirty-five backward talukas have been identified for the homestead project, with funds coming from the Sampoorna Gramin Rozgaar Yojana with 50 per cent subsidy from the Centre. The Rural Development Ministry, the nodal ministry for SGRY, has already agreed on the scheme for Karnataka.

The agricultural reforms package also has something for marginal farmers who own land, but not the resources to use it optimally. The state governments are now required to provide them access to plants, seeds and marketing support.

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The package, then, is an amalgamation of recommendations of the RDI and the Tenth Five Year Plan. Following detailed studies, the RDI had suggested:

* Programmes that allocate homestead and garden plots of at least 5 cents and up to 15 cents in size to rural landless farmers

* Reallocation of some or all government resources for ‘rural housing’ towards the purchase of larger size homestead and garden plots

* A component of government purchase of appropriately located land in a homestead and garden allocation scheme

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* Legal rights to homestead and garden land in the joint names of husband and wife

The Planning Commission in the Tenth Five Year Plan pointed out that ‘‘horticulture, floriculture and vegetable cultivation on small plots of land have proved beneficial for the poor. Agricultural labourers, therefore, need to be provided access to land improve their economic and social well-being… Ownership of even a small plot of land enables a family to raise its income, its nutritional status and lead a more dignified life.’’

The reforms, as a whole, aim at altering land lease laws and allowing contract farming. A homestead may not match up to these revolutionary levels, but if research results are to be believed, could make the difference in numbers of farmers languishing below the poverty level.