It is rightly said that biotechnology can put years in life and life in years of mankind.This plannet within last 100 years of chemical agriculture and massive industrilization has poluted this plannet beyond repairs.Biotechnology is such magic stick that lot can be achueved in field of enviorenment,food, health,agriculture. Degradation of land has affected fertility of land and made it expensive farming with increased dosages of chemical fertilizers and more water requirements.Chemical fertilizers are also polluting rivers and sea.Biotechnology can make organic agriculture a great succes with contamnationfree food with no degradation of land.Biodiesel and biocrop for electricity also can create huge additional income for rural india by using wasteland too. We need to halt migration to cities by making farming viable by making small farming too profitable with input costs affordable with R&D by govt with seeds and water,fertilizer and presticides available at cheap rates and then minimum support pricing by FCI procurements to distribute it through pDS.This shall help 65 % population in farming and 60% urban population and 90 % rural population spending 60% of income on food.Let us ban forward trding and MNCs procuring and distributing.Let us build rural india with food, water, employnent so that every village becomes a plce to live and urbanization is halted.Let us also go for foodprocessing in small decentralised cooperative manner as we only process 2 5 food and 50000 crores vegetables are wasted.Pluse storage and road connectivity too. Mere massive credit to farmers without viable farming as above may even damage our banking.
Dissemination of this advanced knowledge and technology could be a key to spurring agricultural growth. The MP Government publicised about 6 years back an award-winning software that would be spread over the length and breadth of MP to acquaint farmers all about latest agricultural techniques and practices, and painted a picture of MP flowing with milk and honey. But today all these plans and pictures are in the doldrums.For in this spread of info., the politicians would make no money! It is only when we have dedicated, patriotic politicians and government officers can we expect this evergreen revolution. Else, it will be a \"never-green \" revolution!
much is being said and hope being done also about green revolution a second time but how many of us know and realize that how much difficult it is the first green revolution came at a time perhaps when we were just beggers, responsibility of a new freedom and very little and poor infrastructure and scarce scientific knowledge about agricultural prcatices with our farmers. so the seeds injected from CIMMYT into our fields gave them new life and thy food to us.
the genes that brought around the revolution too had travelled a world from japan to mexico to back to asia.
the bottom line was influx of new genetic material
the liberty to share and exchange the material and knowledge was therefore the reason that a country like us at that time within years became self sufficient.
is this going to be possible in the new IPR regime when all genetic material goes under the hammer of property rights and barring the exchange theerby
moreso over the increase in yield levels is yet to be achieved in india particullarly in the gangetic plain where still a gap of arounf 25 mtonnes exist when it comes to our R&D systems needs to be made more liberal, independent and with incentivs
Sir, EM[effective microorganisms), a conglomerate of beneficial microorganisms developed by dr Teuro Higa of Japan and manufactured in India by Maple Orgtech, is a very potent and 100% ecofriendly tool to enrich the soil without chemicals, boost production and make the products more healthy & nutritios and prolong their shelflife. EM can also be used in animal production, in everything from shrimps to eggs, chickens and milkproduction. Mixed into water and feed, EM will make the animals more healthy and happy, it will improve their digestion and production and take away flies and bad smell. When used for fermenting biodegadable waste in large scale, as it is done by Pune Corporation, municipal waste will be turned into wealth for farmers. When EM is used for wastewater treatment, all the treated water can be recycled for gardening, agriculture and other purposes. This we are doing at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetam, Ettimadai, Coimbatore. EM is the perfect tool for farmers who want to step down chemicals and go over to organic agriculture and in the same time maintain their level of production.
our farmers are made subject to competition with 300 billion dollers subsidiesed western agro products.Our R & D is poor so also infrastrecture as compared with advanced countries.pluse world bank conditionalities in name of fiscal discipline deprive farmers of infrastrecture pre & post harvesting.this is real problem & productivity without massive involvement of small farmers & farm labourers shall finish purchasing power of rural India& lead to social problems of suicides & organised crimes. enhancing productivity means jobloss growth.reducing costs,massive public spending on infrastrecture strecture,R & D,post harvesting are true solution. advanced countries should import from India massive organic food & fruits than dumping their.Govts should subsidise farming costs & give price supports & instead of terrif cuts and lifting quntitive restrictions should impose antidumping measures and give export subsidies too.
It was a good article to read. Just to add to biotechnology, if advance information technology is aplied in the field of agriculture, then it can help in conservinf natural resources in cost and time effective way. An example to it is use of remote sensing and GIS where we can map the natural resources from farm level to regional scale level. This provides information to the farmer about the type of soil in which he is farming, water holding capacity of the area, land use pattern of near by area, slope of the area etc. By this he can be well prepared for the type of management practices he can follow before and after crop is been grown. Using maps he can be trained about conservation techniques, reducing soil erosion, improving soil productivity.
In a nutshell it can be assumed that IT and ITES can be a vital tool to improve productivity.
The poor state of agriculture in our country has one reason that the agricultural lands are disposed for real estate buisiness where very high remunation is available purticularly when NRI fund is utilized by investing in this sector as the real estate has very booming sector NRI sector should be attracted in farming side by institutionl farming on large scale and large food processing with good returns by exporting. Farming and food processing should also be in line with industries and the stocks should also be listed. The NRI investment should also be attacted to this stocks The availability of the agricultural land is reduced due to the high boom in real estate. This to some extend should be reversed to farming and food processing VSS
Dear Sir, Dr Swaminathan is a very respected oersonality, especially for us- the products of Agri. universities. So his interview was very exciting to read. Thanks to rediff too. I wish to support these views strongly, as I am too involved in an interesting Market Develepment project on Organic agriculture. In org agri, the sustainability (evergreen) is the key aspect and Dr Swaminathan too knows this. I also visited key European countries to understand how organics were developed there and how their markets have grown. We paln to develop strong domestic markets as well as export markets for organic products in India. The services of our projects are available to all ineterested, and I wish ti contribute to Dr Swamanathan's initiatives too. Regards.
Farm Research in India has produced far more words and phrases than grains and greens. Per NAC we should have reached 240 mts in foodgrains production in 2000 itself - a level we may not reach even by 2010. Green( i.e. wheat) revolution levelled off two decades ago. Our agricultural growth has shown a dismal growth at an erratic average of 2%pa and is a big drag on an otherwise booming economy. Much of the growth in foodgrains has been due to diversion of land and other resources to those crops as a result of procurements at favourable prices and not due to any spectacular advancement in yield which are no where near the world best. Thus it is farm research that has failed India. All that we can boast of is developing varieties of mexican wheat suitable to our conditions. Market oriented White revolution continues to grow, Poultry has made remarkable progress so also fisheries. We must actually we moving beyond revolution- to sapare sufficient land and resources for other crops- like oilseeds, feeds, fodder,fruits and fuel etc. Geographically we are located at an strategic place from where we can feed hungry Africa and fill markets with value added food products.
