aCentral Agricultural University, College of Post Graduate Studies, Umiam-793 103, Meghalaya
bShri G N Patel Dairy Science & Food Technology College/SDAU, SK Nagar, Sardarkrushinagar, Gujarat-385506
Online published on 5 December, 2018.
In India, over 58% of rural households depend on agriculture as their principal means of livelihood. So far, the strategy for development of agriculture sector has focused primarily on raising agricultural output and improving food security. But the policies that are decoupled from production are generally preferred to commodity programmes whose share is still high and unable to achieve the desired goal may be due to many undesirable side-effects. Whereas sustainable agriculture requires rural livelihood specialization, in which agriculture becomes the key economic activity and farming should be managed more professionally which will not only enhance land and labour productivity but also help to increase marketable surpluses through formal supply chains and eventually leads towards efficiency in input and output market. On the other hand, enhancing income objectives could be met by general social and welfare policies. This policy set may want to minimize the negative side effects. It is worth mentioning that cost plus pricing, which ignores demand side, definitely helps to enhanced farm income through market price support but it will lead to major distortions in the system. Higher supply without any change in demand will create a glut and thus depress market prices, requiring either large-scale procurement by the government at enhanced Minimum Support Price or a huge a price deficiency payment. In NEH, where majority of farmers are small and marginal are unable to take benefits of this. Targeted policies have better chance of being effective than output-based policies in terms of actually achieving the desired objectives. It is necessary to address the target base intervention which sometimes may be of a very local nature or confined to a specific portion of the population. In the North Eastern Hilly Region (NEHR) of India, paths to achieve sustainable development goal should be explored rather than to fit the same size for all. The paper addresses some of these issues in regard to the north eastern region.
