The Hindu Business Line : Farm extension, key to second Green Revolution

With increasing population and declining per capita land available for agriculture, the future looks bleak. Unless the second Green Revolution is ushered in soon, it will be difficult to sustain the burgeoning population. The current state of farm research and extension could prove to be a major stumbling block.

TIME TO sow the seeds for a second Green Revolution? — S. R. Raghunathan

THE Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, in his address to the Indian National Science Congress in Hyderabad in January, called for a second Green Revolution. This is indeed encouraging as it demonstrates the Government's desire to break the current stagnation in agriculture.

Lately, the Government has taken several measures such as increased credit flow to agriculture and higher budgetary support to irrigation projects and rural infrastructure. The adverse impacts of uncertain weather and possible crop failures are sought to be mitigated by extending crop insurance.

While all these measures would help improve agriculture, the policy-makers must pay attention to the current state of agricultural research and extension.

The first Green Revolution, which the country saw in the 1960s/1970s, was in a large measure due to the positive contribution by the agricultural scientists in developing the appropriate technology and transferring it to the farmers through the extension agencies.

FALLING RURAL INCOMES

With the benefits of Green Revolution tapering, farm growth has decelerated, especially in the 1990s. Worse, with rising population and the nearly stagnant farm income, the per capita income of households in the rural areas is coming down. Poverty has been alleviated to a large extent. with the number of people below the poverty line declining . But with increasing population and declining per capita land available for agriculture, the future looks bleak. Unless the second Green Revolution is ushered in soon, it will be difficult to sustain the burgeoning population in the future.

However, the current state of agricultural research and extension could prove to be a major stumbling block. Unless these two departments are effective in developing newer technologies and taking them to the doorsteps of the farmers, any amount of topline support in terms of policy pronouncements or higher financial outlays may not help.

Where are the superior seed varieties that would break the current yield barriers and take crop productivity to higher levels? Where is the technology package to manage soil problems caused by the over-exploitation of groundwater, imbalanced fertiliser application and the age-old crop rotation, repeated year after year? Where is the package of practices to tackle new pest problems, weeds and crop diseases, with concern for the environment and the consumers?

Concerned with the low technology output of the research institutions and the lack of significant technological developments, the Government has constituted a Committee under the chairmanship of Dr R. A. Mashelkar, Secretary, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and Director-General, CSIR, to examine the constraints and recommend ways to improve the role and contribution of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

RESEARCH NEEDS

It is time the ICAR identified the "research needs" of agriculture to meet the future challenge (of achieving 4 per cent per annum growth to meet the overall GDP growth target of 8 per cent per annum during the Eleventh Plan period and beyond) and `prioritised' them to meet the urgent needs of the farmers. The focus has to shift from merely increasing production to raising productivity and enhancing farm incomes.

With the increasing role of information technology (IT) in every sphere of human life, the extension methodologies need to be revamped. IT has to be deployed much more to provide guidance to the farmer, taking into consideration the changed socio-economic scenario, technological leaps such as the expanding TV coverage, increased literacy levels, improved telecommunication facilities and access to Internet.

A successful case in point is the role of e-choupals, initiated by ITC in improving the economic well-being of farmers, as in the soyabean areas of Madhya Pradesh. The need of the hour is to replicate many more such models on extended geographies, covering more crops and increasingly larger number of farmers.

Technology and enterprise have helped the grape growers of Maharashtra conquer new opportunities. The shift from low-value traditional to high-value horticultural crops such as grapes and pomegranate has changed the economic landscape of this area and the farmers are enjoying the fruits of modern science and technology. In sharp contrast, farmers in the Vidarbha area (of Maharashtra) face continuous crop failures due to over-dependence on monsoon and the lack of proper guidance on the risk-reward scenario. In the 1970s, agricultural research and extension played a major role in the success of the Green Revolution. Today, with the benefits not paying off in such a big way, unless the research and extension machinery is revamped to meet and serve the changed needs of agriculture, the second Green Revolution may remain a pipe-dream. Why has the extension machinery failed to cope with the challenges?

KNOWLEDGE GAP

One of the root causes is that the officials at the lower levels have not kept pace with the technology developments and, hence, do not have the required knowledge to `communicate' to the farmers. In many areas, the farmers are far more knowledgeable than the officials.

Second, the officials lack the `motivation' to acquire and spread knowledge among farmers. Consequently, they are not able to play the role of `change agents" effectively.

How to get this vast extension juggernaut moving to take the fruits of research to the doorsteps of farmers? How to transfer the modern technology from the laboratories to the farms? How to strengthen the link between research and extension to give agriculture the much-needed momentum?

This is what the policy-planners should worry about and come out with innovative and practical solutions; else, agriculture would continue to remain stagnant and achieving an average growth target of 4 per cent per year will remain a pipe-dream. This set-back in agriculture will neutralise all gains of the manufacturing and the service sectors. Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) formulated a strategy to achieve the target growth rate of 4 per cent per annum. Some of the major constraints identified by the MoA are: Low water use efficiency and poor management; genetic erosion; low seed replacement level; soil degradation and fatigue due to inadequate nutrient application and insufficient post-harvest infrastructure.

To address each of these constraints effectively, the farmers need to update themselves with the required `knowledge' and `scientific inputs'. Where are the inputs and how will these be carried forward to the farmers effectively are questions that call for urgent answers.

(The author is Director, BASF India Ltd, Mumbai. His views are personal and he can be reached at kumaras@vsnl.com)

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