Land That Works for Its Owner

The plan

1. Free leasing. Leases are registered online in 15 minutes against the digitised title (Chapter 5), with the owner's biometric consent. The law states plainly that a lease never gives the tenant ownership. A registered lease is enough for bank credit and crop insurance.
2. Free sale. States drop the "farmers only" rule for buying farmland and replace ceiling laws with one cap: no person or group may own or lease more than 5,000 acres per district.
3. The Farm Lease Exchange. Within 1 year, a national exchange on the Chapter 5 land registry lets owners list land and lets certified farm operators (companies, cooperatives and startups of any size, with no turnover threshold) lease blocks of 500 to 5,000 acres, contiguous or within 2 km of each other.
   • One standard lease: 10 to 30 years; rent indexed yearly and paid monthly into the owner's bank account; 3 months' rent held in escrow; title never moves; the land returns on the end date.
   • Owners' choice: owners who pool land may take equity in the operator instead of rent.
   • Same rules as any business: water and power at the published tariff; food-processing and cold-chain units on or off the farm start on a same-day self-registration under the one Business ID (Chapter 7), with the same random safety, fire and food-safety audits as every business; one-day plant-health clearance at export ports.
   • Organic at scale: leased farms follow the Chapter 24 transition with on-farm compost and bio-fertiliser plants, precision application, mechanical weeding and pulse rotations, under the same yield brake and grain lock, so the move to organic never gives up the output gains this chapter counts on.
   • Target: 50 lakh acres (about 20 lakh hectares, under 2% of net sown area) under exchange leases within 1 year, with output reported quarterly.
4. Contract farming. Any buyer may contract with any farm. Every contract is registered, the buyer's payment is held in escrow before harvest, and disputes go to a tribunal that rules within 30 days.
5. Modern machines on every farm, with no subsidy.
   • Machine certification within 30 days at any NABL-accredited lab against one open spec; any certified machine sells anywhere in India.
   • Tractors, harvesters, planters, laser levellers, drip kits, farm drones and autonomous machines are imported at the single 5% duty and taxed at the flat 10% GST; machinery subsidy schemes end.
   • Open machine-hire apps let any small farm book a machine by the hour at a price shown upfront, so small plots use the same machines as large farms.
   • Hire-purchase loans are secured on the machine and the registered lease (Chapter 3).
   • One national rule approves drone spraying of bio-inputs and permitted products.
   • Farm law takes Europe's list: only pesticides and farm chemicals approved in the EU are sold in India, with every other one phased out within 1 year, each with a safer alternative named for every crop use and a buy-back paid by registrants (Chapter 24).
   • A certified repair point in every block, and 10 lakh operators and mechanics trained in year 1 through the Chapter 23 skills track.
6. Sell anywhere. Any farm may sell to any buyer, in any mandi or none, in any state, with no market fee outside the mandi. Every mandi trade, and every trade outside a mandi above ₹1 lakh, is recorded on e-NAM (the national online farm market), so prices are public. Essential Commodities Act stock limits on farm produce are removed except in a declared emergency.
7. Market prices for inputs and crops.
   • Fertiliser prices are freed in the same 4 quarterly steps as every other subsidy (months 1, 4, 7 and 10, Chapter 23), with all dates and prices published in the first week, so buyers can plan ahead of each step. Fertiliser imports are open to any importer at the single 5% duty. Pooled gas pricing for urea plants ends on the same calendar.
   • The minimum support price (MSP) ends. The state keeps a strategic grain buffer at the official norm, bought from any seller whose grain meets the published quality spec, at the published daily e-NAM price, paid per verified warehouse delivery.
   • There is no per-acre payment. A farm household qualifies for the Chapter 23 transfer on exactly the same test as every household (income under ₹1.2 lakh a year and net assets under ₹10 lakh). PM-KISAN folds into that transfer.

Cost and return

• Subsidy saving, counted once: the ₹1.86 lakh crore fertiliser subsidy is part of the Chapter 1 subsidy saving of about ₹3.01 lakh crore a year, already net of the Chapter 23 transfer, the Chapter 15 STEM claim and the transfer reserve. This chapter does not spend it again.

Price shock (estimate): urea at market price is about ₹1,700 to ₹2,000 a bag.

Four steps, open imports and soil-test dosing (Chapter 24) spread and shrink the hit.

• Buffer at market prices: stocks of 604 lakh tonnes are nearly 3 times the 210 lakh tonne norm, so year 1 needs little buying. The surplus of about 394 lakh tonnes is sold by open auction in equal monthly lots of at most 35 lakh tonnes, halved in any month the e-NAM price is more than 10% below its 3-year average. Grain for ration shops during the Chapter 23 wind-down comes from this surplus first.
• Productivity (estimate): a 10% productivity gain on farming's roughly 18% share of GDP adds about 1.8% of GDP.
• Exchange and registry: built on the Chapter 5 land-record stack; transfers flow through the Aadhaar-linked bank channel that PM-KISAN already uses for nearly 10 crore farmers.
• Jobs: larger farms mechanise and free labour for food processing, cold chains and Chapter 7 factory jobs; machine-hire, repair and operator jobs grow in every block.

Timeline

First 30 days:

• The Centre publishes a Model Farmland Freedom Act (free leasing, free sale, the 5,000-acre district cap, the standard lease), after 21 days of public consultation including farmer unions.
• Notify the 4-step fertiliser calendar and open fertiliser imports. End MSP purchases and notify the open buffer purchase rule.
• The online lease registry goes live in the 10 states with the most digitised records.
• Remove Essential Commodities Act stock limits on farm produce.
• Publish the open machine spec and certification test.

Within 1 year:

• At least 12 states pass the Model Act, starting with states that have already moved on land or leasing.
• 2 crore leases registered.
• The Farm Lease Exchange live in every adopting state, with 50 lakh acres under exchange leases.
• Fertiliser fully market-priced by month 12; every eligible household on the Chapter 23 transfer.
• Every mandi trade, and every outside trade above ₹1 lakh, on e-NAM.
• Farm power rises from about 2.5 kW to at least 2.8 kW per hectare (estimate), with machine-hire prices published live by district.

Outcomes after year 1: farm power reaches 4 kW per hectare, the level of advanced farm economies; the land market reaches every state as it opts in, or nationally once farmland transfer moves to the Concurrent List (Chapter 28).

Guardrails

• Land cap: no more than 5,000 acres per person or group per district, checked monthly against the land registry using the real beneficial owner behind every company (PAN-linked). Excess is sold within 180 days, or the state auctions it.
• No eviction trap: a lease ends only on its end date or by court order for non-payment. No lease registers without the owner's biometric consent.
• Rent security: 3 months' rent in escrow on every exchange lease; a missed month is paid from escrow within 7 days, and an operator with 2 escrow draws in a year is suspended from new listings.
• Cooling-off: every land sale, by any seller, can be cancelled with a full refund within 30 days.
• Price spikes: if the all-India retail price of rice, wheat or pulses rises more than 15% above its 12-month average, the buffer auctions stock within 7 days.
• Buffer floor: stock never falls below the official norm on any quarter date; every purchase is published within 48 hours.
• Machine safety: every tractor sold has a roll-over protection frame.
• Exchange uptake: if exchange leases are below 25 lakh acres at month 9, listing fees are waived and Krishi Vigyan Kendras run pooling meetings in every lagging district within 30 days.

Limits to know

Land is a state subject, so the Centre cannot impose a national farmland market within 1 year. The path through is the opt-in Model Act with extra borrowing room of 0.5% of GSDP for adopting states, and Chapter 28's move of farmland transfer and leasing to the Concurrent List, which needs ratification by half the states. Fifth and Sixth Schedule areas and states with Article 371 land protections join only after the constitutional amendment that phases those protections into the one national rule.

Sources: Agriculture Census holding size, CEIC · Move away from agriculture, Data for India · PLFS annual report, MoSPI · Model Land Leasing Act, NITI Aayog · Fertiliser subsidy FY26 revised, SuperKalam · Fertiliser subsidy, IndiaSpend · Grain stocks, Angel One · China land transfer, Asia Society China Dashboard · Argentina land leasing, Buenos Aires Times · USDA ERS: TOTAL survey 2014, tenure and ownership of farmland · Farm and Dairy: most rented US farmland is owned by non-farmers