Why do farmers grow rice?

This question could have been why farmers continue to farm in the first place but the issue is complex enough and I have restricted to the humble crop of rice. Rice is a major crop in India and grown in almost all the states in the country. As far as my observations and studies go, most of the crop of rice, is theoretically at a loss when value of family labour is taken into consideration and it is highly labour intensive. This situation has not changed at least for last 25 years. While proportion of population dependent on farming in general and grain farming in particular has reduced considerably there is huge number of farmers who are still continuing with the crop. Then why do people compulsorily cultivate rice? Here is a rural reality check.

Rice has been proactively purchased by the government with a minimum support price (MSP). Farmers in Punjab and Haryana with their large landholdings can grow rice in a mechanised way with a reduced cost. They also get huge government subsidy in the form of low prices for electricity, fertilisers and farm machinery. This keeps their costs low and makes the rice profitable at the farm level. 

With some small holder farmers who have still continued with rice cultivation as a major crop this MSP game plays differently. Farmers sell their produce to the government procurement centres at a higher price of Rs.18 a kilo and then use that income to buy government rations at Rs.2 a kilo while remaining in low income categories. Not at all a good way to live your life but I have observed this pattern with small holder farmers in Chhattisgarh state, many parts of which have only one single rice crop followed by some other income sources.

At many places, there is high inundation of water on the farm lands and rice is the only crop which can be cultivated in such condition. This holds true for majority of the high rainfall areas and valleys. I had visited a block called Katthiwada in Alirajpur district of Madhya Pradesh. While surrounded by low rainfall areas growing maize in rainy season, this unique hilly area receiving about 2000 mm of annual rainfall was growing rice. Similar situation can also be found due to human intervention such as the canal irrigation schemes where cropping pattern decided for the command areas has flooded rice. When everybody around you is cultivating rice by default then your land gets inundated with so much water even if you don’t want it, there is no other option but to grow rice. 

Then there are some areas like ours which are very near to the towns and land prices are high. There are other opportunities of income which can be better than growing rice however many small holder farmers still go for cultivating rice. For many of them it is a way to keep the claim on the land which has been with the family for generations. With the corrupt land record offices and complex procedures involved in land inheritance many times getting your name registered on the land records is difficult. In this situation any uncultivated fallow land can be lost to influential land grabbers. The best solution is to keep it under cultivation.

And there are of course farmers who are really worried about their own food security, do not want to depend on government hand outs, want to have good quality residue free food for themselves, and have made their rice crop profitable in purist sense.

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