Economic Highlights
New
Delhi, 15 March 2007
Need To
Revamp Set-Up
Farm Productivity Holds the Key
By Dr. Vinod
Mehta
The Economic Survey and the budgetary proposals
have rightly drawn the attention of the country to the lopsidedness in our economic growth. The manufacturing and the service sectors are
doing very well while the agricultural sector is not doing very well. The year 2003-04 witnessed
a record agricultural production; almost 19 per cent increase in the foodgrain
production and a record oilseeds crop.
This has not been sustained in the subsequent
years, which partly explains the current spurt in the prices of essential commodities like wheat, rice, edible oil
and pulses. The continuous fall in their
production for the last three years was indicative enough of the crises and
inflationary prices. The situation could
have been avoided through timely imports; but this at best is a temporary
solution. The real solution lies in increasing the productivity of these essential commodities which are ridiculously low by
world standards.
If we compare the productivity of Indian
agriculture to that of the productivity in other countries, we will find that
Indian agriculture is way behind them.
Take for instance China,
which can be our competitor in the international agricultural market. With only 100 million hectare of agricultural
land, China is producing 400
million tonnes of grain while India
with its 146 million hectares of agricultural land produces on an average 108
million tonnes of food.
If we take the production per hectare of
individual crops we will find that we are much behind other countries. The average production of rice per hectare in
India is around 1,756
kilogram, compared to 5,475 of North Korea;
we are harvesting only 2117 kilogram of wheat per hectare compared to 7,716 by
the Netherlands. Similarly, India
produces 1606 kilograms of corn per hectare compared to 9091 of corn per
hectare by Greece.
Take soybean and groundnut, it is the same story. The production of soybean per hectare in India is 804 kilograms compared to 3,453
kilograms in Zimbabwe. As for groundnut India
harvests only 929 kilograms per hectare compared to 4,600 kilograms per hectare
harvested by Israel, that is
to say that Israel is
getting five times the groundnut per hectare as against India. Similarly, India
produces 15,817 kilograms of potatoes per hectare compared to 45,349 produced
by Belgium. As for sugarcane India
produces 65,382 kilograms per hectare as against 135,448 kilograms per hectare
produced by Peru.
If we take these comparisons seriously, which we
as a nation should, then India
has a lot to explain and lot to do. Good feel factor will not deliver results
here. It may be all right to have
occasionally a record harvest and overflowing granaries in a relative sense but
we are just able to meet the domestic demand for foodstuff and may have surplus
to see us through one or two bad harvests.
For a country, which also looks forward to entering the international
agricultural market in the near future this is not enough. It is necessary
to have a substantial surplus of agricultural products every year on a fairly
continuous basis if we are to emerge as one of the important exporters of
agricultural products in the world like Australia
or USA
or EEC countries and also meet our own domestic demand.
The figures also show that the potential of
increasing agricultural productivity is immense. If other countries can get three to five
times the production per hectare of any agricultural product why can't India
at least double its output per hectare of the agricultural produce? The potential for such an increase exists and
there is no reason why India
cannot achieve this.
Another point that emerges is that in spite of
the fact that India
is spending so much on agricultural research, we have not yet been able to
produce seeds of high yielding varieties of international standards--seeds
which can change the face of Indian agriculture. There has to be some match between the funds
we spend on agricultural research and the actual results we get in the form of
produce per hectare.
The figures also reveal that India is not using its agricultural
inputs to the optimum level. A country
like China which has less cultivable
land than India has developed one of the best water management systems to get
the maximum advantage. Similarly, Israel has turned desert into an
arid land again mainly through its water management system. A country like Netherlands which can grow one crop
a year because of cold weather and snow makes the best use of its inputs to get
the maximum output per hectare.
The lessons
which the experience of other countries in the field of agricultural sector
holds for us are that we have still a long way to go to tap the full potential
of our agricultural sector and that by following an appropriate strategy we can
increase our produce of agricultural products several-fold.
There is no getting away from research in the
agricultural sector. We will have put in
all our efforts to develop high yielding varieties of various kinds of
agricultural products which can go well with the kind of weather conditions we
have in India.
This research will have to be extended to allied activities like animal
husbandry, fishing and plantation. But
the kind of bureaucratic environment that exists in our agricultural research
institutes is not conducive to research that is needed for the development of
high yielding varieties of crops or milch animals.
The number of suicides in the ICAR in the past
goes to show how callous we are towards the agricultural research
scientists. Therefore, as a first step
we must revamp the setup of our agricultural research institutes and
agricultural universities and fix some goals for the development of high
yielding strains of food crops, edible oil seeds, sugarcane etc. Increasing
allocation for agriculture research is not enough. We have to deliver results.
But pending the development of our own high
yielding strains, we should make the best use of available high yielding seeds
of various crops that are available in the international market. If the seeds being sold by the multinational
companies can substantially raise the agricultural productivity per hectare,
why should not the country go in for the use of such seeds immediately, even if
they are expensive? The use of such
seeds would also increase the earnings of the farmers. What the agricultural research institutes can
do is help identify the seeds being sold by multinational companies which would
be more suitable to Indian climatic and soil conditions and would yield the
maximum produce per hectare.
The country also needs to pay attention to the
irrigation system. Fifty years after
independence our agriculture is still dependent on rainfall and any shortfall
in rainfall during any year can severely upset our crop targets. And whatever water we have for the
agricultural sector, most of it goes waste because of mismanagement. A large number of countries have gone in for
drip irrigation system, which at the moment can be said to be the best
irrigation system for a number of crops.
Therefore, we need to rethink our irrigation policy and either develop
our own system or scout for one available with other countries and if possible outright buy the technology and implement it.
The development of agriculture has been uneven
in the country; some states like Punjab and Haryana have gone through the phase
of green revolution while states like Orissa
and Bihar have yet to go through this phase. This implies that we have still a vast
untapped potential for the development of agriculture in the country. Instead of having an all India agricultural
strategy it may be more meaningful to have region cum state specific
agricultural strategy within the overall general national agricultural strategy
so that the specific local cultural, social and economic factors could be taken
into account for the rapid development of the agricultural sector.
To sustain the high growth rate of the
manufacturing and the service sector we will have to push up the growth of the
agricultural sector by focusing on increasing the productivity.---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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