Why do many farmers say they would leave agriculture if they could?

Survey after survey reveals that around 75% of farmers would leave farming if they had alternative employment options. Many actively discourage their children from taking up agriculture. This is a rational response to the economic reality of small-scale farming in India.

With average holdings of just 1.08 hectares, most farmers operate at a subsistence scale. After accounting for input costs, labour, and loan repayments, net income is often below the minimum wage in other sectors, assuming adequate rainfall and stable prices. One bad season can eliminate an entire year’s earnings. A significant share of rural households carries persistent agricultural debt. The combination of production uncertainty and financial precarity makes farming psychologically exhausting in ways that aggregate income data do not capture.

The structural problem runs deeper than individual distress. In developed economies, 2—3% of the workforce works in agriculture and earns a decent livelihood. Farmers can do this because each farmer operates at scale, with mechanisation and market access that make the enterprise viable. India has roughly 50% of its workforce in agriculture. Even a substantial productivity improvement cannot generate incomes sufficient for that many people from that land base. The arithmetic does not work.

India needs to create the conditions for a dignified exit from agriculture. Simultaneously, for those who remain in farming, the path to viability runs through consolidation, market access, and the removal of the policy distortions that cap what farming can earn. Keeping 50% of the workforce in agriculture through a combination of inertia and the absence of alternatives is not a support system.