TIRUPATI: For the past seven months, GloVill has been in the business of using innovative ideas to overcome labour shortage in small and marginal farms. While working to clear bottlenecks that bog down farmers, it is also motivating the youth to turn to agriculture in the villages of Vadamalapeta Mandal, Tirupati. Founded by 30-year-old Noothan Venkatesh Varma, a resident of TR Kandriga village and a graduate in public policy, GloVill works on a principle similar to the Centre’s ARYA scheme—“to attract and retain youth in agriculture activities”.
Venkatesh has been researching to understand why many are giving up farming at an alarming rate. Some of the causes he found were labour shortage and educated youths migrating to urban spaces.Venkatesh told TNIE that the above reasons force marginal farmers to sell off their fields to real estate developers thus turning lush green fields into concrete jungles.During his research, he also found that farmers, particularly of his region, are adopting horticultural and commercial crops, mainly mangoes, despite the abundant water availability for the traditional paddy, groundnut, maize and other agriculture crops.
“Adopting commercial crops is directly aiding to the factors that kill farming as a profession. The cultivation of commercial crops needs less labour which decreases work for the already dwindling sector,” Venkatesh explained.He cited a few studies. According to a 2013 report, at least 2,000 farmers were giving up farming in a day in India. Since 1991, over 15 million farmers had left the profession.
“The average age of a farmer in the country now is over 55 years. After a decade, many of them would retire and there will be very few people who will be directly involved in farming, which will have a greater implication on the future of our economy.” Venkatesh suggested that the State government must roll out a new programme to motivate youths to take up agriculture activities and offer them a fellowship.
“One youth from each panchayat or mandal may be selected for the programme and given stipends or a financial assistance to take up farming.”GloVill recently organised an interactive session between locals, members of IIT-Madras Rural Technology Action Group(RuTAG) and IIT-Tirupati and students from local engineering colleges to discuss ways to overcome the labour shortage issue.