The panellists in this session were Parth MN, independent journalist, R Ramakumar, Senior professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and Seema Kulkarni, feminist activist and researcher on agriculture. The discussion was moderated by journalist and author Kavitha lyer.
Agriculture is central, directly, or indirectly, to India’s economy. The sector and allied occupations employ over half of the nation’s workforce. Women constitute the backbone of this workforce. Still, the mainstream/dominant media (and to some extent even the alternative/parallel media), barely focus on agriculture, and most publications don’t even have a farm beat. Substantive coverage usually emerges only during fleeting periods like the year when farmers protested against the farm laws. The panel consisted of academics and journalists who had studied the agricultural sector and covered it.
Analysing the socio-economic position of the farmers in India, all the three panellists raised a vital question at the heart of agriculture reporting in India: “Why have many farmers migrated to towns, leaving their farming work, is a question that sorely needs to be addressed,” said Parth MN, who has reported from rural Maharashtra. According to a recent study, 10% of the farmers in India are at risk of attempting suicide.
Seema Kulkarni raised an important point about reporting on agriculture. She said that the condition of women farmers and smallholders of agricultural lands should be highlighted as they are always neglected whenever we talk about the agricultural scenario in India. She showed some data on land operations by farmers in India. Small and marginal farmers who constitute 86% of farmers operate on only 45% of the land. Medium farmers are 27% and operate on 47% of land while big farmers are only 0.5% of the total number of farmers and operate on 9% land. The role of reporting on agriculture is to make all these realities visible.
Prof. Ramakumar highlighted specifically women farmers. He said amongst female workers, 62.9% are agricultural workers while amongst all male workers, only 38.1% were agricultural workers in 2021-2022. In India, public investment in agricultural research and extension are failing. The productivity level in agriculture is one of the lowest in India. All these issues should be addressed by the journalists, the panellists suggested.
“The ominous nexus of technology and bureaucracy is destroying India’s democratic fabric,” noted Kulkarni. The precarity of work, unprecedented internal migration, and real lack of much official data also limited the scope for agricultural stories to be a regular beat, both journalists noted.
Kulkarni noted that although the real face of Indian agriculture is a woman, the woman farmer in India has been invisibilized. This was due to editorial policy and the way reporting focuses on male farmers and the narrative is around them.
The other major challenge is about organic farming and GMO crops, and storytelling that centres the environmental and public health impacts is necessary in this regard, noted Ramakumar.