The bulletin has been released to reach out to policymakers, private sector companies and development practitioners
India’s leading economic think tank Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) has released the first issue of their quarterly publication Agri-Food Trends and Analytics Bulletin (AF-TAB) on July 22, 2021. This issue is titled COVID- 19 and Indian Agriculture: From Crisis to Opportunities. The bulletin has been released by ICRIER’s Agriculture Policy, Sustainability and Innovations (APSI) team to reach out to policymakers, private sector companies and development practitioners.
Using the findings from an ICRIER study of 2,917 migrant workers across six states — Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, the lead article of the bulletin, COVID-19’s Impact on Indian Agriculture and Migrants, points out that on an average, household income of migrants fell by 85 per cent during June-August 2020. Although 63.5 per cent of the migrant workers had re-migrated to the destination areas by February 2021, the household income of the re-migrants still evidenced a contraction of 7.7 per cent relative to the pre-lock-down level.
India has evidenced a record production of food grains at 305.4 million tonnes in the 2020-21 crop year, along with a historically high procurement of wheat (43 million tonnes) and rice (57.4 million tonnes) as of June 27, 2021. Yet, 30 to 40 per cent of the CPI inflation of 6.3 per cent in June 2021 is ‘due to the inflationary pressures from the food and beverage category’ – as per the second article of the bulletin, India’s Food Inflation Imbroglio. Using the case of pulses that account for 11 per cent of the current CFPI inflation, the article deliberates whether the central government’s recent move of (re) introducing stocking limits on private trade of pulses can control inflation.
Speaking about Agri-Food Trends and Analytics Bulletin (AF-TAB), Dr Deepak Mishra, Director and Chief Executive, ICRIER, said, “The pandemic has been a body-blow to this country, and we are still reeling under its threat. But it is also the time for renewal and revival. At this juncture, an evidence-based, analytical publication like this one holds the potential to inform our policymakers to rebuild a more resilient India.”
Elaborating on the highlights of the bulletin, Dr Ashok Gulati, Infosys Chair Professor for Agriculture, APSI and Chief Editor of AF-TAB said, “Healthy production and procurement is good news at this time when the government has doled out various (food) support schemes for the poor/vulnerable/ migrant labourers who have lost their livelihoods to the contagion…. Can we not turn around the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity for effecting our long-overdue agricultural reforms?”
While the articles in this issue explore the current policy environment, these also throw light on emerging private sector-led innovations that are silently changing the contours of Indian agriculture. A case study of Sahyadri FPCL, for instance, demonstrates how deepening the interface of institutions and technology can foster farmer-market linkages through the federation of farmers’ collectives or FPOs.
A note on the technological innovations for food waste management refers to an ongoing APSI study, which estimated the total post-harvest loss (from grains, oilseeds, fruits, vegetables, plantation crops, and spices and livestock produce) in India to be about Rs 1,30,481 crore for the year 2020-21.
