A step towards sustainable agriculture

To provide enough food and gainful; employment to increasing population is a big challenge before agricultural scientist. To feed such a large population we have to produce at least 205 mt extra food grains and have to double our present day milk, vegetables, fruits, eggs, meat production besides meeting their requirement for fuel, fiber, timber etc for clothing and housing. To primitive know-how of crop cultivation has been transformed into modern agriculture, through ages and it is still changing. And evolving according to the economics, social and environmental needs. It was aptly uttered by Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru ‘everything can wait but not the agriculture’. In the post green revolution era, imbalanced fertilization, excessive irrigation and indiscriminate use of pesticides have undermined the sustainability.
This step can be carry forwarded by equal participation of both the gender through timely and proper extension services. It is just because Development is biased in favor of areas having proximity to the urban corridors, which also attract the largest magnitude of investment flows. The remote hilly areas in the east and to the south have witnessed little growth of per capita income or employment matching the growing workforce. Regional imbalances are glaring and growing. The development gains have trickled down unevenly among rural and urban areas, developed and backward pockets and among scheduled and non scheduled sections of population. Some aspects of the phenomena of social retrogression are quite visible as can be seen from the discrepancies in some key demographic variables. Education and health care facilities face problems of delivery and access. The selective path of development being followed is bound to pose major impediments for the overall growth of the economy, so far as distributive justice is concerned. Under these circumstances, the optimal use of resources for realizing full potential of the economy requires a careful analysis of the economic structure in the long run perspective. The present paper highlights the need to usher in a development process that is equitable, sustainable, participative, stable and efficient- in divergence to the selective growth paradigm that has become the hallmark of the state’s development so far other forms of inequalities are manifest in the state. The development path followed by the state so far has led to reversal of the equalization process. The coefficient of variation in the incidence of rural poverty in 1993-94 between the geographical sub regions of Gujarat was 0.225; for urban poverty it was 0.157. The coefficient rose in 1999-00 to 0.258 (rural) and 0.245 (urban)
POST GREEN REVOLUTION PERIOD IN INDIA
India’s agriculture has been in decline in recent years and growing at a far slower pace than the overall economy. In 2006, it was forced to import grain for the first time in years, ringing alarm bells about food security. Some two-thirds of its population still live off agriculture, which grows about 3% a year. That is less than half the 8% economic expansion forecast by the government for the financial year to March2009.India needs a second Green Revolution to boost food supplies, or its 1.1 billion people will face huge social turmoil, the country’s top farm scientist has warned. Memories were still fresh of the Great Bengal Famine, the world’s worst-recorded food disaster, which occurred in 1943, when Britain governed India and an estimated four million people died of hunger.

Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, Rajya Sabha member and architect of the Green Revolution of the 1960s, which quadrupled food production and made India self-sufficient said
“What we need is political action — we need politicians to ‘walk the talk’,If we don’t succeed, we will face tremendous social problems, The government has identified agriculture as a key area for economic reform and called for changes to boost output of staples such as wheat, rice, pulses and vegetables and bring down soaring food prices there has been “no sign of major steps to make that happen”,
Swaminathan, a plant geneticist whose ideas helped transform India from a starving nation into a food exporter, runs the Chennai-based M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, which looks for ways to create new farm technologies. Policymakers globally now are grappling with how to tackle fast-rising food prices and dwindling stocks, with food riots erupting in some countries. Swaminathan won his doctorate in genetics from Britain’s Cambridge University, but turned down a US professorship when he realized he had studied to “produce enough food” in post-independence India and “serve the nation”.
Now a burgeoning population, a growing middle class with more purchasing power, and erratic weather are among factors creating food scarcity, thus pushing prices up and requiring a new agricultural leap forward, We need to take advantage of the existing technology bank. There’s a large amount of technology out there not being used — in efficient water use, efficient fertilizer use, in extension of farmer-to-farmer knowledge, For instance, nearly 70% of India’s farmers still depend on rain because of a lack of proper irrigation. Storage of food supplies is (still) a big issue, with many crops being devoured by rats before humans can eat them.
India faced a much tougher challenge in producing a second Green Revolution than it did in the 1960s, when too many hungry bellies forced it to live a “ship-to-mouth” existence, depending on US foodgrain imports to stave off famine. Gandhi gave Swaminathan free rein to implement a new agricultural programme, believing it vital for India to be able to feed itself.
“Politics is much more complicated these days There are referring to the unruly national coalition governments that are often at odds with state administrations The prime minister, who was then Indira Gandhi, had authority over the entire country to make sure decisions were implemented,.
“I’ve been trying for a pan-political approach to produce a second Green Revolution—after all we all have to eat first, “Crisis is a mother of invention. We faced a crisis in the 1960s and we succeeded.” Swaminathan said, adding he was optimistic India could achieve the goal.