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Nirmala Sitharaman, the Minister of Finance, Government of India, presented the Interim Union Budget for 2024-2025 on 1 Feb 2024. The budget focuses on empowering farmers, women, youth, and the poor. It proposes several initiatives aimed at cultivating a more robust and sustainable agricultural ecosystem. These are summarized below:
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During our recent ‘Ag-celerate’ Webinar series, we had the honor of engaging in a thought-provoking discussion with industry leaders, Matt Horstmeier from Bayer Crop Science and Vishal Ratan from PepsiCo. The topic of our conversation was “Connecting the field to the business: Maximizing crop yields and profitability with farm digitization.” This insightful dialogue shed light on the transformative potential of digitalization in shaping the future of global agriculture and the food system in the 21st century.
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About 84% of the 570 million farms globally belong to smallholder farmers, who cater to anywhere between 70%-80% of the world’s food needs. Smallholder farmers are constantly threatened by financial uncertainties caused by natural calamities that are beyond their control. Climate change is the biggest cause for this uncertainty. Frequent extreme weather events and growing occurrences of pests and diseases are increasing financial losses for farmers in developing countries, affecting their livelihood.
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Smallholder farmers are central to the global food system as they cultivate a sizable portion of the world’s agricultural land. About 84% of the 570 million farms globally are smallholders who farm less than two hectares of land. According to a study published in World Development, they operate about 12% of all agricultural land and produce approximately 35% of the world’s food.
