Bhubaneswar: In Odisha, while the number of farmers has reduced, the number of farm labourers had increased during the decade between 2001 and 2011.
The state agriculture minister, Pradip Maharathi, Tuesday told the State Assembly on a question by BJP member Dilip Ray that the number of farmers has come down from 42,47,661 in 2001 census to 41,03,989 in 2011 census. On the other hand the number of farm labourers has gone up from 49,99,104 to 67,39,993 during the decade.
Quoting the state agriculture statistics, the minister said that the number of farmers has gone up from 40,67,135 in 2000-01 to 46,67,466 in 2010-11. While the number of marginal farmers has increased, the number of small, medium and big farmers has alarmingly came down during this period, he said. The number marginal farmers has gone up by 11 lakh from 22,94,520 to 33,66,296 between 2000-01 and 2010-11. However, during this period, the number of small farmers has come down from 11,13,599 to 9,18,647, number of occasional medium farmers came down from 5,00,531to 3,11,261, medium farmers from 1,45,110 to 63,688 and big farmers from 13,375 to 5574 .
The minister said that between 2000-01 and 2010-11 the number of share croppers has gone up from 1,42,197 to 2,19,329 , and number of occasional share croppers has came down from 6,42,741 to 3,28,946. Thus the number of share croppers has come down from 7.85 lakh to 5.48 lakh during the decade.
According to 2011 Census, out of total 96 lakh families, 47 lakh farmers families and 5 lakh share cropper families.
