Labour freedom for farm allocative efficiency
Labour freedom is a central part of the opportunity specified in agriculture through institutional reform, wage contracts and rural development policy. These opportunities are legally designed under the rules of law for the betterment of the farm labourers and rural and migrant workers who engaged in farming and non-farming activities in the rural labour market. Allocative efficiency improves by redistributing the land ownership rights among the small, marginal and landless labourers as small size farms are found more efficient. Therefore, institutional reform resolves land inequalities and farm size disparities that are existed in the farming sector. Likewise, tenancy reform expands the bargaining capacity, tenure security and production rights by offering rental contracts and land possession to the tenant
(Banerjee et al., 2002). Thus, labour freedom enhances allocative efficiency.
Next, labour wage contracts for crucial farm works save time and costs in searching for and hiring labourers
(Eswaran and Kotwal, 1985). Moreover, the inclusion of minimum wage laws surges labour freedom by paying wages as per work capacity and skills for improving labour efficiency and wage payments
(Benjamin and Brandt, 2002). At the same time, a rural development policy promotes employment-oriented investment in technology, agro-based industries, cooperative farming and infrastructure to increase off-farm job opportunities. These provisions are beneficial for residing as well as migrant labourers. The policy can fascinate migrant workers by providing opportunities to settle for a long time near the rural region
(Renkow, 2003). Thus, a favourable rural development plan offers off-farm jobs at higher wage rates.
The results of the labour freedom index are represented in Table 1, which reveals that a large proportion (68 per cent) of medium farmers have moderated scores when compared to small (55 per cent), marginal (52 per cent) and landless (42 per cent).
Financial freedom for farm profit efficiency
Financial freedoms are input-output subsidies provided to the farmers to increase profit margin in the production activity. Input subsidies increase financial freedoms by reducing the explicit costs through supplying agricultural intermediate inputs at a reasonable price in the market, such as; seeds, fertilizers, electricity, pesticides,
etc.
(Gulati, 2013). Subsidized inputs replace the substituted resources available in the market at a higher price for enhancing financial freedom
(Nasrin et al., 2018). Agricultural product price stability increases financial freedom options and opportunities through securing minimum support price against any extreme fall in the market price of farm products
(Gilbert and Morgan, 2010). Besides, government purchases food grains from the farmers and acquires essential food grains under the procurement policy. Cash transfers are the government’s support to recover the losses during a bad harvest
(Demeke et al., 2012) and credit policy provides low-interest availability of institutional credit for the farm-work.
Based on the size of the farms, Table 2 depicts a progressive and robust relationship between the weighted mean score on financial freedom and category based various farm-size. As farm sizes increase, the weighted mean score rises and mean value of the financial freedom indicators rises too.
Technical freedom to strengthen technical efficiency
Technical freedom provides the drift of technical information among the farming community for enhancing farm-level technical efficiency. It offers agricultural research and extension services in the form of embodied and disembodied technical change. The embodied technical change includes new techniques, new methods and investments in new inputs, plants and scarce technical resources
(Tripathi, 2012). Whereas, disembodied technique change upgrades the old cropping method. Moreover, technical freedom promotes inventions implementing intellectual property rights in agriculture. It puts check on the profitable use of innovative schemes, inventions and creative ideas of the farmers
(Asker and Stoeckel, 1999). Next, agricultural biodiversity requires to produce good quality food and sustainability through preserving farm resources.
Likewise, technical information comprises income-generating opportunities for the farmers using mass media in agriculture. Print media diffuses agricultural statements to understand the farm variety, crop diseases and techniques through newspapers, booklets, magazines and newsletters to resolve farm technical issues
(Saleh et al., 2018). Whereas, electronic media gives well-timed farm information on radio and television and sends messages and alerts on mobile phones
(Hussain, 2015). In this way, information, communication and technology (ICT) have the potential to avail scarce services and updates regarding new technology, weather forecast and market fluctuations,
etc.
(Parmar et al., 2018). Thus, ICT speeds up the process of technology transfer at a lower cost during the risky and uncertain conditions of agriculture.
This Table 3 describes the intensity of the technical freedom index by farm-size, which indicates that large proportion of medium farmers receive higher scores of technical freedom, which is higher than small and marginal farms by 21.43 and 3.57 per cent, respectively.
Enhancing the agricultural efficiency through business freedom
Business freedom resolves trade and transactions related issues of the farm produce through changing marketing, market access policy, liberal trade and protection policies. Marketing policy boosts agribusiness by upgrading the quality, size, grade, brand and packages of the product for accomplishing an open market sale of the product
(Nidhi et al., 2017). Market access expands agribusiness by investing in cold storage and transportation for connecting the product to nearby ‘mandis’ or market yards. It facilitates shifting from one state to another for better price options. Market access improves through joining contract farming suggesting the farmers to cultivate after confirming the product rate, input support and technical assistance
(Chand, 2016). The trading contracts assure the cultivators against the market price fall, crop diseases and climate change, therefore, encouraging them to produce earnest crops. Trading contracts connect farmers with the cooperative farming, companies, firms, processing units and customers like cafeterias, mills,
etc.
Liberal trade policy raises the competency level of the farm products to enhance the flow of agricultural products across the nations
(Kamara, 2004). Likewise, a protection policy is required to achieve food self-sufficiency and security through implementing region-specific policy changes in the tariff and non-tariff barriers
(Sharma, 2016). Thus, these mechanisms of business freedom are essential for increasing farm-level efficiency.
Table 4 illustrates the farm-wise intensity of the business freedom index. A positive association between size-based farm categories and the business freedom index observe during the survey. A large proportion of medium farmers (52.4; 8.33) find themselves in a moderated business freedom index.
Economic freedom index
Table 5 depicts the positive relationship between farm-size and the economic freedom index. It observes that 80 per cent of medium farms have a moderated score, which increases to (more than 60 per cent) for small (nearly 35 per cent) for marginal and again increased to (around 4 per cent) for landless.
Thus, the results are generic and expected. The weighted mean of the economic freedom index for medium farmers is highest (2.77), which is greater than small (2.58), marginal (2.38) and landless (2.18). Hence, the estimates reflect the average scores of economic freedom.
