Agriculture Current Affair 24 April 2022

Agriculture absorbed additional 11 million workers over last 3 years: CMIE

Driven by good performance compared to other sectors during the pandemic, agriculture has absorbed an additional 11 million workers over the last three years while the rest of the economy lost 15 million jobs, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy said.

According to CMIE’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey, agriculture saw an estimated 4.5 million increase in employment during fiscal 2021-22. While total employment fell by 21.7 million in the pandemic year of 2020-21, agriculture provided employment to a substantial 3.4 million. In 2019-20 as well agriculture saw an addition of 3.1 million to its count of employed.

This has been possible because of good monsoon, bumper production and higher prices, the CMIE said. “Agricultural prices have remained elevated as well. Farmers have therefore seen the benefits of rising prices for their bumper crops and have also benefited from favourable terms of trade,” CMIE said, adding that this prompted migration of labour to agriculture.

Fertiliser subsidy set to touch record Rs 1.65 lakh crore in FY23: Crisil

The central government’s fertiliser subsidy bill set to touch an all-time high of Rs 1.65 lakh crore this fiscal against Rs 1.05 lakh crore budgeted, due to an unprecedented rise in the cost of raw materials and prices of fertilisers globally, said Crisil Ratings on Thursday.

To be sure, the government has been proactive in addressing the situation. In the past two fiscals, it has paid an additional Rs 1.2 lakh crore and increased the budgeted subsidy. However, the steep rise in raw material prices has been negating this, and another intervention may be needed in this fiscal. Not doing so would take the subsidy arrears to an all-time high of over Rs 75,000 crore by end of this fiscal.