The Action Plan

1. To ensure the practice of proper farming methods, we need consolidation of the small and uneconomic land holdings. To benefit from the economics of scale, the farm should be at least 1000 hectares. The bigger the better but not too big either. Every village area should be consolidated into at least 2 or 3 large farms to allow for maintaining the diversity of crops and for competition.
2. Of course smaller boutique farms of 50 to 100 hectares may also, be viable, especially for Horticulture and specialist agro products, and in hilly areas, but such farms are not many and here we consider the majority of farms which are in the general agricultural production. Encourage intensive and combined horticulture farming and pisciculture in such farms, the best practices for water and resource conservation. Learn from innovative farmers.

3. The land pooling concept for dry land farmers was very successfully done by the farmers of Magarpetta near Pune. Ofcourse, this pooling was done there for a housing project and not for farming but the aim was the same, to help and benefit the small landowners. Many Farmer Producers Organizations are also, arising across the Country but such organizations need to be longer lived, hence, need to be Corporatized.
4. Large scale farms will be possible if all or most of the farm owners of a village or small town, be willing to pool their lands into 2 or 3 Companies or Corporations, definitely not into Cooperatives which have mostly not lived up to expectations. Cooperatives, very soon become fiefdoms of the rich and influential farmers at the cost of the small farmers. Each farm owner would be allocated an equity holding proportionate to the size, location, type of holding (wet, irrigated, or dry etc) and with a weightage for condition of soil.

These parameters could easily be determined by a small committee of local farmers themselves with help from the Revenue and Agricultural Department officials.

Such Corporations can each be managed by, its own Team of Professionals selected by the Board of the Corporation or by an Executive Board of professionals appointed or selected by a Management firm willing to take on this task. In such Companies, the General Body Meetings of the shareholders (erstwhile farm owners) can be mandated to be held twice a year, prior to the Crop cycles, for better transparency and confidence building.

Also, though all decisions can be taken by strength of shareholding, the election to the Board of the Corporations should only be by secret ballot every two years and on a one shareholder one vote basis, despite the size of the shareholding. This will prevent domination by the larger share holders. Also, the shares held by any single shareholder can be limited to Five percent and for a family to at most 20 percent.

5. In addition, in order to maintain a strong sense of ownership of each farmer, whatever his/her shareholding, it would require the Corporation to build a Guest House with rooms and suites which can be rented to the farmer on payment, as he / she may require for up to a week or two in a year. This would enable him / her to stay at the farm, perhaps with his/her children or grandchildren and show them his/her farm and its working by walking about on the farm and even pick or buy its produce for home consumption at subsidized rates. He / she could also, describe how farm life was in their farming days. A video showing the before and after conditions would help in the bonding with the land.
6. For the first five or even ten years No equity shareholder should be allowed to sell his equity, except perhaps to another shareholder of the Company. However, to prevent exploitation, no shareholder should be allowed to at any time own more than five percent or as a Family more than 20 percent of the shares of the Corporation. Those holding greater acreage may be required to distribute the same amongst their family members, or sell the excess or exchange it for a share in another local Farm Corporation. The Auditors of the Company will, every year, fix the value of the share. The shareholder may avail a loan against the mortgage of his shares with the Company if he so desires at not more than 50 percent of the value as declared regularly, say every 6 months, by the Companies Auditors. The end use of such loans should be verified by the Company, or a farmers committee set up by it, to avoid misuse.
7. It is therefore now time that the present Governments, both Central and State, to pool many of the existing subsidy, loan waiver and rural development schemes into a fund for this purpose, perhaps even contribute more to enable the “Krishi Jagruti” scheme, as recommended below to become viable and effective, for the benefit of the farmers and of the rural towns and villages and also, of the Country. Just the savings from the many thousands of crores of agro products that go waste in our Country every year and the increase in the productivity under such a scheme, would more than justify the initial subsidy. Long term loans to such Corporations, from the Government or NABARD or other financial sector institutions could be additional avenues to be looked at.

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