Farmers Distress Index launched

• Farmers Distress Index launched in July 2022, by the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA) under the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) with the main motive to minimize the agrarian distress in the form of crop loss, failure and income loss.

• Farmers distress have increased in the recent years with the change in extreme climate as well as market and price fluctuation that driving them to death by suicides many times.

• Farmers Distress Index trying to reduce their distress and prevent its spread from a few farmers to the village or block level by pre-warning different stakeholders including central, state and local government and also non-government agencies about the future occurrence of farmers distress so that they can take timely preventive measures.

Methodology to track distress

• The first step of the index methodology to track distress is going through the local newspapers, other news platforms and also social media platforms for any report or incidence of farmers distress which includes:

• Localised cases of issues related to debt repayment.

• Death by suicide

• Pests attack on the crop

• Natural calamities like drought, flood

• After knowing about the relevant news or incident, contacts of farmers from the local area will be collected to conduct telephonic interviews which consist of 21 standardized questions to gauge early signs of distress.

• The responses against the questions are then mapped against seven indicators:

• Exposure to risk

• Debt

• Adaptive capacity

• Landholding

• Irrigation facilities

• Mitigation strategies

• Immediate triggers

• Socio-psychological factors

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