Though the government is expected to come up with huge debt waiver for farmers in the budget tomorrow, the news is dismal on other fronts in agriculture. Several reforms and schemes that are vital to invigorating agricultural growth have been almost non-starters in the last year of the UPA government’s term.

Overall growth for agriculture is expected to be 2.6 per cent during 2007-07 compared to 3.8 per cent the previous year. The reason given by the survey is “reduced capital investment and plateauing of yield levels”.

Some of the areas of concern are irrigation, fertiliser, high yielding seeds and improved market access. Without these, the debt waiver for farmers will not result in any long- term impact on agriculture that “is vital to the overall GDP growth”.

Consider some of these half-measure reforms, revealed in the Economic Survey:

Horticulture

The production of vegetables, fruits, plantation crops and spices had registered an increase of 8.9 per cent in 2006-06. Growth in production decelerated to 2.8 per cent in 2006-07. The survey suggests it is mainly because of decline in production of onions and stagnation in production of spices. This is despite the National Horticulture Mission for the development of this sector, which cost the government more than Rs 1,100 crore a year for the last three years.

Fertilisers

To increase use of fertiliser, the government kept farm gate price unchanged. The consumption of fertilisers grew at an average of 3.3 per cent in 2005-06. However, the government has still not been able to get around two issues. One, the subsidy is going to manufacturers, and, two, the current pricing mechanism of fertilisers has encouraged nutrient imbalance. There is excessive use of urea and a bias against micronutrients because of the subsidy to phosphorous-based fertilisers. The government is yet to take a view on including sulphur in the subsidy regime as well as introduce fortified or value-added fertilisers like zinc or boron. Restrictions on MRP and fixed subsidy continue to be major stumbling blocks.

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