Business Standard / New Delhi August 20, 2008, 5:48 IST By pointing out that the overwhelming majority of farmers are economically worse off than the lowest-paid government employee, the apex body of farmers' organisations has not unveiled any secret. This has been well known for some time. And although the spate of suicides by farmers in recent years has not usually been by the poorest among them, the severe problems faced by farmers have come into focus. The service done by the Confederation of the Indian Farmers Associations (Cifa) is to dig out some intriguing evidence from reports of various committees and commissions, in order to make its point. Cifa has simultaneously sought to highlight the steadily growing gap between income levels in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. This is a matter of special concern, especially considering that the proportion of the population depending on agriculture for subsistence is still more than 50 per cent, while the share of agriculture in GDP has dropped to 18 per cent. By definition, the average income in the non-farm sector will be nearly five times what it is in agriculture. Indeed, Cifa quotes studies done in the Planning Commission to show that the ratio is 1:5.2