Was wondering if agriculture can be taken up as a full-time profession. Leave aside the money that can be earned. Assuming we are looking at 1 acre of land. Looking at the amount of effort/time that it requires, it doesn't seem like it can be a full-time profession. You have short peaks where the work is there (like tilling, sowing and harvesting) and the rest all is slack time. At most maybe a couple of hours a week for inspection, irrigation, weeding etc. So obviously human productivity will be very less if this is the sole occupation. (place the economics here) Compare this with the amount of time people are expected to put in other professions. 8 hours a day and 6 days a week (barring a few professions which have 5-day weeks). With this a person can earn around 6k rupees per month which amounts to 72k rupees a year. What I intend to convey is that we could think of doing other things apart from agriculture and increase human productivity. People were used to making cultivation as the only occupation in the earlier days because, that was the only thing you could do, or you had very limited options then, but now the gamut of oppurtunities has increased considerably. I dont say it is not being done...there are people who do cultivation and also do agricultural labour for others. But I am hinting at the state/govt providing for such a flexibility where you can have two or more occupations. Of course this seems to be a bad idea in the current situation when there is a large chunk of population which is totally unemployed.
- how much land is required?
- size of the family?
- no. of hours spent?
- yearly income?
- money invested?
- limit on the productivity
1 comment:
I don't think you are right. I think agriculture can be taken as a profession. My grand parents did that. They were busy than a developer. It's not that easy task and also effort depends on the crop you are trying to cultivate. And also irrigation facilities are to be improved a lot in India.
Post a Comment