Enabling Smallholder Prosperity through Commercialization and Diversification

As India becomes the world’s most populous nation, the two central concerns for food security is how to increase and diversify food production. Although this is an opportunity for income growth for small farms, rectifying disadvantages owing to low economies of scale and poor access to capital, technology, and mechanization is critical to leverage it. In this chapter, we look at the scope of institutional interventions such as aggregation models in the form of cooperatives and farmer producer organizations in addressing the scale and access disadvantages. We also touch upon the need to revisit the issue of land reforms to enable land tenure systems to improve access to land and access to mechanization and credit.