1. “Transportation plays an important role in agricultural efficiency and production”.

Elaborate its importance in agricultural sector.

Approach:

We have to explain how agricultural production, productivity and efficiency are related to transportation. Further, we need to elaborate on the backward and forward linkages of transportation with respect to agricultural processes.

Answer:

Agricultural Productivity is a quantitative term, which measures the ratio of index of agricultural outputs to that of inputs in the farm production. Therefore, it provides an estimate of farm output per unit of input. On the other hand agricultural efficiency is related to the overall viability of agricultural operations, in the sense that it is fruitful for the agriculturalist to carry on with his profession.

An efficient transport system is critically important to productivity as well as efficiency of agricultural operations. If transport services are of poor quality, infrequent, or expensive then it will turn out to be disadvantageous to the farmers. For instance, an expensive transport service will lead to low farm gate prices (the net price the farmer receives from selling his produce).

Insufficient provision of transport services especially during harvest times, low competition of service providers on rural roads, high vehicle operating costs on bad roads, inefficient vehicle operations are other factors related to transportation that act as impediments to a productive and an efficient agriculture system.

Physical availability of transport infrastructure, transport means, frequency, rate, growth and its linkages to important market destinations also affect agricultural production and efficiency. Further, the location of market and storage facility influences the choice of vehicles used in transportation.

There are yet another set of factors which affect the cost of agricultural products. These include price of fuel, fare to travel to market centers for supplying raw materials and taking services from the city centres. Thus by acting as a linkage between the core and the hinterlands, it plays a role of two way linkage.

Keeping in mind the importance of transportation in agricultural production and efficiency, certain measures like viewing all modes of transportation from a systems standpoint rather than separately, tackling funding issues etc. can be taken.