‘At a time when we have jobless growth, why do we want jobless agriculture?’ — My interview (Ground Reality Blog)

Ground Reality published a blog post by Devinder Sharma who writes farmers in the United States and Europe are facing a severe agrarian crisis similar to the one in India. They are being driven out of agriculture despite getting huge subsidies. This is happening in rich countries that had adopted market-oriented agricultural reforms some six to seven decades back. Europe provides 100 billion dollars in subsidies out of which 50 percent goes as direct income support.  Despite this, one farmer quits agriculture every minute in Europe. In the US, since the seventies, 93 percent of the dairy farms have closed down. But milk production has gone up as the corporates have got into dairying and set up mega-dairy farms. Director general Jo Swinnen has suggested that India should follow a policy of: “Move up or move out.”