About the Author- The author of this article, Veeresh S Wali, a research scholar, pursuing his PhD in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology.
The agrarian development of the country is the need of the hour as it has twin advantages in the Indian context. Firstly, it is the only sector which can provide employment to the huge population of the country as no other sector of the economy is ready for absorption of the growing population. Secondly, ensuring food security to the nation cannot be achieved without sufficient intervention towards agricultural development. Agriculture and rural development may be considered as thrust areas in order to achieve the anticipated sustainable economic development. Looking at the possibilities it may seem necessary that developing agriculture should be made the cornerstone of policy making. The government has taken various initiatives in this regard and has tried to deal with a comprehensive approach. Doubling of farmers’ income by 2022 is one such flagship initiative by Narendra Modi led NDA Government. To achieve the goal of doubling of farmers’ income by 2022 there is a need to augment the income of the farmers from both on-farm and off-farm sources. The secondary agriculture is one such option which enhance the income augmentation.
Secondary Agriculture-It is a form of “Post production Agriculture” which mainly deals with operations other than conventional practices of cultivation”. Although, the concept of Secondary Agriculture is not systematically defined in the “Agriculture domain”, the interpretation is very well understood. The secondary Agriculture plays a vital role in achieving our vision of “Doubling Farmers’ Income by 2022(DFI)”. Hitherto we have been practicing agriculture with variety of technological interventions and made the country self-sufficient by turning it from a “Begging Bowl” to a “Feeding Basket”. Now it is the time to rethink the strategies to synchronize the boost in the agriculture production with similar boost in the income level of farmers. In literal sense the prefix “secondary ” to any activity may imply the next step of operations- for example, secondary schooling, or secondary processor in computer or secondary sector in the economy, etc. The term secondary agriculture would therefore indicate and refer to an elevated level of agricultural operations, or those linked to agricultural activities.(Report on DFI by 2022)
Secondary Agriculture may be consisting of functions like assembling, cleaning , grading, sorting, drying, preserving, packing, and the storage but does not include the processing of fruits and vegetables. This definition excludes all ‘processing activities’ from being called secondary agriculture. A secondary agriculture also creates a scientific division of labour which not only increases the employability of the labour but also increases the marginal productivity of the labour thereby reducing the disguised unemployment in agriculture. The Planning Commission of India had constituted a Technical Advisory Committee on Secondary Agriculture(TACSA) in 2007. The TACSA submitted its report in octber 2008, but did not define the term “Secondary Agriculture ” instead it states that the term “is very broad as it includes all food and non-food bio-resource-based products for human and industrial uses.”(Report on DFI by 2022)
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