For the last few days, I have been thinking about farmers and farming in general in India. Born in an agricultural family, I'm quite familiar with this area. In my opinion, farming is the most divine job that anyone can do as a way of livelihood. So, you might wonder why aren't we pursuing farming as a a way of life. We all know that on average, agriculture isn't profitable in India.
Major reason for this situation is the huge information asymmetry between the farmers and other systems or the lack of information. For example, We all know that a huge chunk of agriculture is dependent on monsoon rains in India. A farmer would ideally want to plan the harvest based on the monsoon timings. But unlike the old days, nobody seems to have the monsoon time table anymore as they don't stick to the regular timings around the year, due to whatever reasons. I wondered, how is the west managing this problem - my friends told me that west, for a long time and still, has a predictable weather patterns. Moreover, they also seem to have great weather prediction systems in place. Now that India is going high-tech, investments in this area could pay huge dividends going forward.
Another reason for the profitability is the high cost of human labour in an environment filled with all the above uncertainty. So I think that Indian agriculture benefits from machinery similar to that of west's.
