How can India ensure that integration with global agricultural markets strengthens rather than weakens the position of small and marginal farmers?

About 86% of India's operational holdings are small or marginal [1]. For these farmers, joining global markets cuts both ways. Exports can bring better prices. Import surges and falls in world prices, however, hurt most those who have little scale or bargaining power. Integration therefore has to be managed so that it helps the smallholder, not only the large exporter.

Why smallholders are vulnerable in global markets

• Lack of scale: Small plots cannot meet the volume, grading and traceability standards that export buyers demand.
• Weak price floor: MSP protection is thin outside a few states. Three states grow 49% of India's wheat but account for 93% of procurement [3]. CACP itself calls farmers' inability to sell at MSP "one of the key areas of concern" [3].
• Weather risk: Rainfed farming covers about 60% of gross cropped area [2]. A failed monsoon and a fall in world prices can therefore hit in the same season.

Measures to make integration work for them

• Aggregation: The 10,000 FPO scheme (₹6,865 crore) gives small farmers scale, credit and links to markets [1]. The NCF's "Small Farmers' Estates" model would combine farming on individual plots with shared post-harvest services [2].
• Export value chains: The Agriculture Export Policy, 2018 aims to connect farmers with global value chains through product-district clusters [4]. These clusters should be linked to FPOs, not only to large traders.
• Calibrated trade protection: The NCF urged swift action on import duties to protect farmers from swings in international prices [2]. This should sit within the stable trade policy regime that the Export Policy promises [4], so that farmers are not hit by sudden policy reversals.
• Price buffers: A Price Stabilisation Fund [2], together with procurement extended to states where it is currently thin [3].
• Market information: Real-time price information through commodity exchange and APMC electronic networks, as the NCF recommended [2].
• Climate resilience: Rainwater harvesting and aquifer recharge in rainfed areas [2], so that farmers can keep their export commitments through a bad season.

Global markets reward scale, quality standards and the ability to absorb risk, and individual smallholders lack all three. Grouping them through FPOs, protecting them with calibrated tariffs and price buffers, and making rainfed supply chains more resilient can turn integration into an opportunity. This would carry forward the Swaminathan Commission's view that farmer welfare is the purpose of farm policy. It would also advance SDG 2.3, which aims to double the incomes of small-scale food producers.