What Trump is right about our agriculture

Protecting agriculture has been the bedrock of India's tariff policy since Independence. The arguments in favour have endured: food security and farm livelihoods. Which begs the question of whether the policy has served us over eight decades. Extended to manufacturing and services, India's tariffs create concentric rings of protection that render agriculture uncompetitive. Factory jobs in a protected economy with no strong record of innovation do not grow fast enough to absorb excess workforce from farms, perpetuating low productivity. This shows up in low farm wages and insufficient food. Selective price supports skew farming in favour of crops that the government stockpiles and perpetuate shortfalls in others. The food security we seek is an illusion, and India finds itself having to export its extra produce and import what it cannot grow enough of. Since we are continuously in the market for food, both as a buyer and as a seller, we ought to be playing by market rules.

Farmers constitute India's largest population of entrepreneurs. Denying them access to the market does them a disservice. They need protection, but not in the form in which it's being provided. Risks associated with farming in India must be lowered through a continuing increase in crop productivity and sustainable use of land and water. We are going in the other direction, where productivity is rising through intensive use of imported inputs like fertilisers. What we need is large-scale investments in farm technology, including GM crops, and in marketing, logistics and warehousing of farm produce. Farming must become a mature industry if it is expected to provide the country with food security. At some point, the discourse must move beyond identifying market failure to finding and implementing remedies.

An economy the size of India cannot shield half its population from market forces in perpetuity. And the economy cannot grow fast enough if farming remains trapped in low productivity. Shorn of bluster, Donald Trump is stating the obvious.