Last week, the International Expert Group on Sustainable Food System released a report entitled "Land Squeeze: What Causes the Unprecedented Pressure on Farmland, and How Can We Achieve Fair Access to Land?", which outlined how the global land shortage has led to a surge in land inequality, rural poverty and food insecurity, with small farmers bearing the brunt. There are many factors causing this squeeze, including land grabbing, green grabbing, occupation of cultivated land by other industries and urbanization, and farmland integration.
India is considered to be one of the countries where small-scale farmers are particularly affected by these impacts. As shown in the figure below, agriculture is the largest employment sector in the country, with 45.5% of the workforce engaged in related activities. This is based on the 2021-2022 regular labor force survey report issued by the Ministry of Statistics and Planning Implementation of India. Geographically, 59% of the rural labor force is engaged in agriculture, while 6.7% of the urban labor force.
The industry with the second largest number of employment in India from 2021-2022 is construction industry, accounting for 12.6% of the labor force, trade, hotel and restaurant workers accounting for 12.1%, and manufacturing industry accounting for 11.6%.
This chart shows the proportion of Indian workers, divided by a wide range of work industries (2021-2022). Data source: Statista.com
