Farmers Distress Index
Source : Down To Earth
GS II : Agriculture

Overview

1. News in Brief
2. How it helps

Why in News ?

In 2022, the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), an institution under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) started working on a kind of an early warning system called ‘farmers distress index’, a first of its kind for India.

• The work is in the final stages and the index will be handed over to the central government in the next two-three months.

About Farmers’ Distress Index

• The major reason for developing such an index was to lessen the agricultural misery caused by crop failure or loss and income shock.
• With a rise in catastrophic weather occurrences, as well as market and price volatility, farmers are now more vulnerable to shocks, which frequently drive them to commit suicide.
• The index will work to foresee this distress and stop it from spreading from a small number of farmers to the village or block level by warning various stakeholders.
  • This including central, state, local, and non-government agencies, about the impending occurrence of farmers distress in a specific block or district so they can take prompt preventive measures.

How index will track?

• First step is search of local newspapers, other news platforms and social media platforms for any report on incidence of farmers distress like localised cases of issues with debt repayment, death by suicide, pest attacks, drought, floods, migration, among others.
• Based on the first step marginal and small farmers or tenant farmers from the area will be collected to conduct telephonic interviews.
  • 21 standardised questions to gauge early signs of distress.
• The answer will be mapped against 7 indicators
  1. Exposure to droughts, floods, crop failure due to pest attacks, livestock deaths
  2. Debt
  3. Adaptive capacity of farmer and local government through different schemes
  4. Land holding and irrigation facilities
  5. Sensitivity, mitigation and adaptation strategies like growing of contingency crops if main crop fails
  6. Triggers for immediate distress like health-related expenditure
  7. Ssocio-psychological factors and impacts.
• Based on these 21 questions, the degree of distress will be identified.
  • The index will have values from 0-1.
  • A value between 0-0.5 will indicate low distress
  • 0.5-0.7 will indicate ‘moderate’ distress
  • Above 0.7 will indicate ‘severe’ distress
• Index is severe, it will identify which component, among the seven, is more severe and contributes maximum to farmers’ distress.
• Handing over the index to the central government and it will be made available to different state governments and various department.

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