India: Reinventing Agriculture in the Time of COVID-19
COVID-19’s economic implications have once again catapulted agriculture into the mainstream discourse, write A. Suresh and A. Amarender Reddy at The Wire. The reverse migration of laborers to India’s hinterlands is having a differentiated impact across regions. While agricultural operations in the well-endowed regions are about to suffer, the hinterlands will have received an excess supply of laborers, throwing up new challenges and opportunities.
In this context, it is worthwhile to revisit the role of agriculture in economic development to throw light into the policies the sector will need to adopt to recover better.
Economists have delineated agriculture’s major roles in economic development, broadly in terms of contributions like products, markets, factors and foreign exchange. Product indicates supply of goods like foods and several raw materials (like cotton) for the industrial sector, while absorbing labor. This is the most critical contribution. The market drives demand for industrial products. Factor mainly refers to the form of supply of labor and capital for non-farm sectors. The foreign exchange contribution of agriculture is in terms of exports of agricultural commodities.
Continue reading at the The Wire.
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