Agriculture

In India, fifty percent of the workforce is engaged in agriculture and about eighty five percent of farmers are small and marginal having less than 2 hectares of land. Unlike China and Vietnam, India has experienced slow structural and rural transformation. Compared to China and Vietnam, poverty reduction in India was at a slower rate during 1988 to 2014. During the first phase from 1988 to 2005, India's poverty reduction was slow but accelerated three times during 2005 to 2012. Research revealed that unprecedented rising in global prices of agriculture commodity boosted private investments in agriculture by more than fifty percent. Remunerative prices for agricultural produce coupled with investments in agriculture lead to the increase in productivity, agritrade and real farm wages which have reduced extreme poverty in rural areas. By raising productivity in agriculture through higher R&D, irrigation and building value chains for high value agri products like livestock and horticulture, rural transformation can be more inclusive. Building value chains through farmer-producer companies, India can create off-farm gainful employment opportunity in rural areas, along with efficiency and participatory mode in the agriculture, India needs huge investment in agriculture, both by the private and public sector, to eliminate extreme poverty and malnutrition by 2030.