Rain-related events hurting India’s marginal farmers more than extreme heat: Survey
The ‘State of Marginal Farmers of India 2024’ said that a third of its 6,615 respondents reported having to cope with adverse weather in the last five years.
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In the past five years, rain-related events hurting India’s marginal farmers more significantly than other adverse weather conditions, particularly extreme heat, according to the State of Marginal Farmers of India 2024 report published on Friday.
The report, brought out by the research and advocacy group Forum of Enterprises for Equitable Development, relies on the Indian government’s definition of a marginal farmer as someone who conducts agricultural activities on less than one hectare of agricultural land, either as a proprietor, sharecropper or tenant.
For its 2024 report, the Forum of Enterprises for Equitable Development interviewed 6,615 marginal farmers across 21 states by telephone about the impact of nine different extreme weather events on their crops in the past five years.
These are: early withdrawal or delayed arrival of the monsoon, floods, cyclones, droughts or less than-normal-rainfall, heatwaves, rising daytime temperatures, prolonged summers, prolonged winters and an increase in the number of unseasonal rainy days.
Of the 6,615 respondents, 40.9% said that their villages had been hurt by droughts or less than-normal-rainfall, 32.6% said they were impacted by excessive or unseasonal rains, 23.6% said their villages experienced early withdrawal or delayed arrival of the monsoon and 17.5% saw their villages flood.
Thirteen percent of the respondents said that their villages had been hit by a cyclone...
