Agriculture in the times of Lockdown

A couple of days ago, I came across this interesting news article discussing GDP numbers. While India’s overall GDP contracted by 23.9% in the April to June 2020 quarter, the agricultural sector grew (not contracted) by 3.4% in the same period. Quite an impressive performance! These numbers got me curious, and I thought of looking at the Simha data to see if I can find an explanation.

We had begun the installation of our smart telematics device, Simha Kit, in tractors in October 2019. Our focus was on Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra then. By March 2020, more than 700 tractors had a Simha Kit installed. While 700 is a tiny number when compared to the total number of tractors in India, the data could still provide significant insights or at least indicate the trends, I hoped. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Have a look at the video below. It plots the activity of tractors containing Simha Kit from 1st March 2020 to 30th September 2020. Since the number of Simha Kit installations also kept growing in the same period, I plotted normalized metrics compared to absolute metrics. Thus, there is a plot showing the total acres farmed per tractor, instead of total acres.

Active tractors are those having their engines ON for at least 30 minutes during the day.

If you observe the video closely, you can make several interesting observations, some of which are listed below:

1. The adherence to Junta Curfew (22nd March) was quite high. However, quite interestingly, the activity on Junta Curfew day was still marginally higher than the activity on the day of Holi (10th March).
2. The tractors involved in agricultural operations were back to their pre-Junta Curfew level activity almost immediately after Junta Curfew. The announcement of the lockdown (25th March) hardly deterred the agricultural operations. In fact, newer peaks were scaled in agricultural operations in May (Rabi Harvesting) and June (Land preparation for Kharif)
3. The tractors involved in the transportation business (Sugar transport, brick transport, etc.) were quite adversely affected by the lockdown announcement. This can be inferred from the average commute distance per tractor. It did not reach the pre-lockdown levels, at least by the end of September. There were a few spikes here and there, but the average was below the pre-lockdown level, even at the end of September.
4. The number of active tractors also did not reach the pre-lockdown levels till September end. This kind of indicates that some tractors involved in the transportation business may just have been laid to rest during the lockdown.
5. The agricultural activity, as expected, declined after the land preparation in June.
6. Though unrelated, this video also shows the impact of the lockdown on the Simha Kit business. No Simha Kits were installed from March 17 to May 5. Restrictions started easing from 1st May onward and the number of Simha installations finally broke the status quo on 6th May. May was still slow. Growth picked up rapidly from June onward. At the end of September, the number of installations was nearly double the pre-lockdown value.

The Simha data very convincingly explains why agriculture grew when every other industry contracted. Rains don’t wait for the lockdown to end, and therefore, neither do farmers. They show up on the field every day, work hard, and support the Indian economy when it needs it the most.

Enjoyed this article? Then be on the lookout for another two weeks later. Till then, for any data related discussions, feel free to drop us a line at datalabs@carnot.co.in. And don’t forget to follow Data Kisaan on Medium.