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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

We need to build our food security: MS Swaminathan

If we can have a nuclear submarine programme, a space missile programme, cricket sponsorship programme by individuals like Sharukh Khan, why can’t we have a programme to save rotting paddy lying across the country,” says Dr MS Swaminathan highlighting the parody that India’s is currently facing. In Ludhiana to address the convocation of Punjab Agriculture University the scientist and Member of Parliament speaks to ET highlighting that the future belongs to nations with grains and not guns.

Is adopting GM technology inevitable for India to ensure food security it the country?

Genentic Modification is an excellent technology. Somehow, Monsanto developed only Bt. The technology is useful in so many ways starting from ensuring drought varieties of cereals, crops to developing plant with great salt tolerance if sea level increases. The more powerful a technology greater care should be used to benefit fro it. India should not be left behind the world. From the past revolution of nuclear technology we saw how it could destruct and at the same time were useful for medical science.

Is it the crisis of food production or crisis of distribution the main concern?

We have no crisis of brinjals (laughs) but here is a food crisis. It is a 'Do or Die' year in the farm front. The country has enough wheat and paddy stock. We are gambling with temperature and should expect a good wheat crop this year with a dip in temperature. But human body doesn't need only calorie, it also need protein from pulses, oilseed, vegetables and millets. I suggest that during 2010-11, 60,000 pulses and oilseed villages may be organised in rain fed areas. Producing food in adequate quantities and making them available at affordable prices will be the greatest challenge during the year.

Agriculture is the backbone of the livelihood security system of nearly 700 million people in the country and we need to build our food security on the foundation of home grown food. We hardly need to realise that India is the home of the largest number of malnourished children, women and men in the world, majority of who themselves are landless labour. Distribution is again a big crisis in the country.

At the ground level, most of friendly practices like the Integrated Pest Management or integrated natural resources management failed . How do you react to it?

Marginal farmers can't do IPM because of the less land holding . We need urgently a ' farm management reform' and universities can show the way. Collectiveness of farmers can help to improve their economic well being.

With food prices spiraling at an all time what are the immediate steps to be taken by GOI according to you?

It is a matter of concern when we see that even the ‘arhar dal’ is being sold at Rs 100 kg, whereas a farmer would have just got Rs 10 a kg. The current weather conditions prevailing in the country are favourable for a good crop. We need to keep our fingers crossed. However, temporary import should not be seen a solution by the country. It is time when we don’t neglect barren areas (rain fed areas) and provide market, infrastructure and assured prices for commodities to farmers, particularly pulses.

Secondly, the country needs to improve own storage space. We cannot be like a US or a Canadian farmer who has his own individual silos but we can build one million tonne capacity storage for wheat, pulses, paddy, sorgum etc across 50 locations in the country. Can we not? Thirdly the government’s different agencies should adopt a 'deliver as one' approach. We have parallel schemes like the Rashtriya Kisan Vikas Yojna with Rs 25,000 crore budget, the National Horticulture Mission with Rs 22,000 crore budget and the National Food Security with Rs 6,000 crore budget. How much impact has it made in the production capability and productivity of farmers?

What is keeping other states to become the food bowl of the country?

The open mindedness and global outlook of Punjabi’s has no match in the country. A Bihar farmers can be seen too conservative compared to a Punjabi. In the 60’s, a GOI program of dwarf variety of wheat was converted to a mass movement only by Punjabi’s. I see eastern India - especially states like Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Assam, Orissa which are the ‘sleeping giants of India agriculture’ - for sustainable food security.

There has been no progress in these states as the five panchsheel of agriculture: Soil health, water conservation, technology and input, credit and insurance and pricing and marketing have been ignored. Nearly 60% of the cultivated area is rain fed and these are the areas where pulses, oilseeds and other crops of importance to nutrition security such as millets are grown. Increasing the productivity and profitability of the farmers is the need of the hour.

Punjab is in throes of an economic and ecological crisis. Where do you see the state and what solutions are there for it to reemerge itself in the national scene?

Yes the state has a huge bulk of challenge from farm indebtedness, low level of water table, increase in salinity, lack of increase in productivity, added on to it the problem of poor soil health and high cost to run water pumps. Still even after 42 years of the green revolution the nation depends on Punjab and Haryana which I consider the ‘heartland’ of wheat revolution. Stability of Punjab agriculture will further enforce food security of the country.

Politicians may make rhetoric statements that they don’t want to be the sole contributor for green revolution, but the moment the crop is harvested and FCI procures the farmer has the money in hand. Sadly we don’t have that system in pulses .For several decades to come, Punjab will remain the main provider of wheat and rice to the national public distribution system

So what should Punjab do at this stage?

Punjab needs to do three things. First of all they need to have a Rs 1000 crore ‘conservation farming grant’. I had proposed this ways back in the 60’s. It will focus on ‘green agriculture’ which involves the adoption of environment friendly practices like integrated natural resources management and integrated pest management.

Secondly, they should improve post harvest technology and work on models of giving value addition to crop. Thirdly they should start moving towards a ‘climate resilient farming strategy’. We need to understand that even a one degree temperature increase will lead to production loss of 5 million in north India. In Punjab wheat production it is a ‘gamble of temperature’ unlike other parts of the country where there is a ‘gamble of rainfall’.