Title: I dreamed a Smiling farmer
--(a selfish idea to ensure my 3 meals a day)
submitted for NERD magazine while I was doing PhD at iit kanpur
Bhukyanath is a peasant from adilabad growing onions on his leased 2 acre land for which he bought the seeds at Rs 400/kg expecting he can sell the outcome for at least Rs 50/kg. 3 moths are over and the price dropped to 25. This was the case still going on since he started farming. How many times a small farmer can resort himself not to commit a suicide? A so called wise suggestion an educated analyst
can give is to quit the farming. What can be the situation if all the farmers follow those wise advises. Can I (you) get 3 tasty full meals a day with ddamn extra complaints.
Rajanna Reddy is another dryland farmer from ananthapuram sowed mirchi at the same time when few hundreds of farmers opted the same without knowing the actual demand. Right when their miserable day arrived they have no other option than selling the entire crop to a mere price of Rs10 a kg for which the cost of growing was 25/kg. What can all those hundreds of vexed unhappy farmers do? Launch a protest on Government to jeopardize their farm loans!
Perinayudu is a an old and experienced farmer from eluru who has been growing paddy since last 30 years and every time he has to compromise in selling at a no loss price for his hard efforts of 90 days under hide-seek play conditions of seasonal rains. And the most difficult thing to digest for gim is that the other vegetables and groceries are coming at a price as dear as gold or silver. Can somebody think of guiding him to chose other profitable crop for his demographic and soil quality conditions ?
All the answers to these questions can only be answered by an Oracle only (not the MNC). When
a most intelligent Indian can forecast an equity price , a countries GDP growth and even the number of MP seats a particular party can win using statistics or other advanced science and technology .
Can we address these poor farmers troubles as intelligently as a Facebook /Google developer can find an optimal buying choices for an online customer to advertise on websites.
The fact is that we are indebted to them at least thrice a day and partly for our pizzas and KFC chickens in growing them. We are now living in a world where a meteorologist can effectively predict whether it will rain in this week or not for at least next month. Similarly, I ask the most advanced and intellectual community of India, Can we predict what the the price of onions after 3 months for nagabhushanam or Can we suggest a better crop for Paparayudu to see him smiling for he got some profit through farming in his lifetime. Can we inform Rajanna Reddy that mirchi has already been sowed by 100 more farmers than yesterday so that he can wait for some more days or chose another demanding seed ?
Agri-Informatics is the life saving Oracle I am going to propose. It can predict a particular crops price and demand from place to place and time to time (in space-time). It should be sensitive to all the key factors like,
Season-wise demand of an agri-product.
Acres of land under agriculture for a particular seed with their recorded age of growth.
The expected rainfall data from meteorology department.
International and national bans and lifts on exports and imports of specific goods related to a crop.
News on Minimum support price levied.
New food subsidy schemes. Subsidized costs of seeds and fertilizers.
Changes in Electricity tariffs for their effect on bore-well dependent irrigation for agriculture.
Variation in prices of alternate substitutes for a an agri-product.
Existing stockpile in FCI and private go-downs.
Fuel costs on transportation.
The buying power of prospective consumers for some specific agri-goods.
Rise and falls in demand from food processing agencies and junk food sellers.
Natural disasters like floods, El-Ninos and droughts.
Mathematically one can establish relations between change in price with respect to time
and change in price and demand with respect to place .
Denote P(t,x) and D(t,x) are the price and demand respectively for an agri-product A .
Then in terms of partial derivatives of P and D a coupled system of Partial Differential Equations (PDE) can be framed as follows.
Suppose, if today, i.e. at t=0 , the price P(0, Nellore) and demand D(0, Nellore) are known for a place x=Nellore then the above stated PDE can calculate P(t, Nellore) and D(t, Nellore) for t=1 day
i.e. tomorrows price . Once the price at t=1 is known it can be iterated to find the price on t=2 day also. For solving those PDE it involves a lot of mathematical effort .
Let us all wish our farmers a happy smile in future for their handsome profits being the reason.
About the Author:
The Author is currently a Senior Research Fellow in the Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics, IIT Kanpur working on PDE models for Object Recognition in Vision. Currently he is also involved in Modelling Agri-Price Forecast models and another programme on finding Optimal food menu according to Nutritious diet requirements for poor and middle class citizens. He can be contacted a
