Kisan Mazdoor Commission (KMC), an initiative by the Nation for Farmers, is a collaboration of activists and organisations focussing on current challenges faced by primary producers, artisans and rural workers in India. This Agenda 2024 for Agriculture & Allied Sectors was released by KMC on March 19, 2024. It builds on recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission in the context of growing corporate control on farming and pushes for the “viability and sustainability” of the sector. Farmers and those engaged in allied sectors have been comprehensively defined to include women, Dalit, Nomadic and Adivasi farmers. The agenda includes in its ambit landowners, tenants, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers, plantation workers, fish workers, milk producers, poultry farmers, livestock rearers, pastoralists, and collectors of minor forest produce. It highlights the growing disenfranchisement of farmers who belong to marginalised communities – Dalits and Adivasis, the agenda notes, are often denied access to forest land and women farmers remain landless and unpaid in many cases. The agenda adds that the central government has drastically reduced government support in farming and is rapidly siphoning off its ownership and management to corporates, highlighting that public sector investment in fixed assets in agriculture is at a meagre 15 per cent. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi, has partnered with corporations like Bayer and Amazon for research and expansion...
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