• Although India is an agriculture based country, it has several agriculture related problems.
• The productivity of agriculture per hectare is called agricultural productivity.
  We can also know about agricultural productivity by finding the income earned per hectare of agricultural produce.

Reasons for low agriculture productivity can be classified into three major types:

(I) Institutional factors,
(II) Technological factors and
(III) Other factors

(I) Institutional factors for low agricultural productivity:

• The physical, social, economic and legal factors that affect agriculture are known as institutional factors.
• These factors are not in much favour of farmers. As a result, the agricultural development and productivity is low in India.
• The institutional factors remained negative for farming and hence agriculture productivity remained low. These factors are discussed below.

1. Land Revenue Collection Systems:

• Even after India became independent, three Land Revenue Collection Systems namely, Zamindari system, Mahalwari system and Ryotwari system existed in India.
• The land tenants and landless labourers used to cultivate land under these systems.
• Under these systems, the landlords used to forcibly take most of the produced crops from the labourers or tenants as rent. As a result, the farmers had no motivation to increase production.
• So, neither individual productivity nor national productivity increased.

2. Agriculture finance:

• Majority of Indian farmers are poor. They take finance to buy fertilizer, seeds, pesticides, etc.
• After independence, private money lenders were one of the easiest and major sources of obtaining agricultural finance. But, these lenders used to charge very heavy rate of interest on the money lent.
• As per a source, In 1951, about 71.6% agriculture finance business was controlled by money lenders.
  This problem was somewhat solved when the government established nationalized banks, regional rural banks in 1975 and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in 1982.
• Due to all these efforts only 27% finance remained in the hands of money lenders and remaining was taken care by agriculture credit institutes.

3. Lack of agriculture marketing:

• Infrastructural facilities such as proper roads and bridges are not well developed in remote Indian villages. So, produce of these villages cannot reach the agricultural markets easily.
• In any case, the majority of the profit goes in the hands of agents, traders and hoarders and not the farmers. The local money lenders and brokers force the indebted farmers to self their crops at cheap rates before they grow fully.
• Moreover, farmers are illiterate and ignorant about knowledge of market, market rates, selling procedure, etc.

4. Rural social structure:

• Indian farmers are fatalist and possess least information about the government policies, framework, benefits, market, etc.
• Indian rural society is bound with old traditions and orthodox structure.
• These people believe that God has given them life full of problems and so they have to live with it.
• So, they do minimal farming and do not have any motivation to increase cultivation and income.

(II) Technology factors:

• In India, majority of the farming is still done with old traditional technology.
• Obsolete and worn out equipment, old ideologies, lesser mechanization, etc. all reduces agricultural productivity.
• Farmers also use traditional seeds instead of modern hybrid seeds which can give higher productivity.
• Many farmers use traditional manure such as cow dung instead of chemical fertilizers. This also reduces the productivity.
• Indian farmers do not use pesticides in sufficient quantity. As a result, the crops catch disease and the productivity suffers.

(III) Other factors:

1. Population pressure:

• Our large population puts high pressure on the agriculture sector.
• Very high employment in agriculture is a proof of the pressure that population puts on agriculture.
• At the time of independence, 72% population was engaged in agriculture. This reduced to 58% in 2001-02 and 49% in 2013-14.
• As per these figures, the burden on population for employment has reduced considerably but still it is quite high compared to other sectors.

2. Lack of economic planning:

• India gave greater emphasis on agriculture during the first five year plan. But, second five year plan onwards, India started focusing on industries rather than agriculture.
• India did not put same efforts, time and money in agriculture sector as it did in industries. In other words, the economic planning ignored agriculture. Hence, agriculture suffered tremendously.