Vidarbha Region especially Yavatmal district of Maharashtra is known as Farmers’ Suicide prone area. More than 4000 farmers of the district have committed suicides during last decade and a half due to agriculture distress. Analysis of reasons for high incidence of suicide have prominently brought out that high cost of agriculture inputs, lack of irrigation and uncertainty about production are main reasons of the distress among farmers, particularly small and marginal farmers. Absence of economic activities allied to agriculture also contributes to the distress significantly.
Deendayal Bahuuddeshiya Prasarak Mandal (DBPM), Yavatmal has been working for more than a decade for sustainable rehabilitation of families of the farmers who committed suicides. We introduce Family Welfare Scheme (Kutumb Aadhar Yojna), Educational Project, Concealing project for rehabilitation of suicide affected families of the farmer.
We also observe that agriculture distress is mainly due to unviable farm models adopted by farmers. The farmers tend to cultivate cash crops with high breed seeds requiring intensive crop management including pest management. This is practiced without any extension service. The inputs, particularly pesticides are purchased as per advice of the vendor and applied indiscriminately. Chemical fertilizers are also applied without assessing requirement by soil testing. Lack of irrigation facilities and irregular monsoon precipitation make the investment in the high cost inputs more vulnerable. There is a general agreement that in the absence of worthwhile extension services, indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers has deteriorated soil texture and use of pesticides has destroyed the soil flora and fauna affecting soil fertility and crop productivity. Thus high investment made by the farmer in inputs is always at risk. This results in increase in liabilities which cumulatively mount to unserviceable level. So for Comprehensive Development of Agriculture Sector we established Agricultural research and training center, Low Cost farming project, Water Shed Project, Agro based business program etc.
