SCOPE FOR COMMERCIALISATION OF SMALL FARM AGRICULTURE

The crux of agricultural development in India is to maintain a rising level of foodgrain production and a reduction in rural poverty by speedy growth of income and employment. The new seed-fertiliser based technology has helped the farmers achieve the first goal of food security, because priority for foodgrain production is rightly compatible with subsistence orientation of the majority of the farmers- especially marginal and small farmers. In the past, it was believed and in fact verified by several studies that the new technology is scale neutral and the poor would share at least equally with rich in the gains from the technology. This has not happened and poverty persists. It is a paradox that a record foodgrain production of 186 million metric tonnes in 1994-95 coexists with nearly a third of the country's population living below the poverty line. Indeed, the economic inequalities have widened over the years, revealing that integrating capitalist agriculture with welfare goals is more formidable than earlier thought of. One reason is the lack of adequate attention in policies and programmes for agricultural development to the need for rapid commercialization of agriculture. The history of the presently developed economies shows that modernisation, monetisation and integration are the essential ways of agricultural development. The new technology helpe