The Hindu Business Line : ‘Ever-green revolution on farm front feasible’

New Delhi, July 10 If India could sustain that unique mix of political courage, scientific excellence and administrative commitment that helped launch the Green Revolution in the mid-1960s, the ever-green revolution on the farm front envisaged by Dr M.S. Swaminathan would become a reality soon, the Minister of State for Commerce, Mr Jairam Ramesh, said on Tuesday.

Delivering this year’s Ajay Mushran Memorial lecture here, Mr Ramesh said that “an economy in boom and agriculture in gloom is a dangerous brew and that is what we have today”.

But, he said, a transformation in our agricultural fortunes was not just an essential pre-requisite for the future but could be feasible since the elements were finally being put in place.

He said that there did appear to be a recovery in public investment with the Planning Commission data revealing that after a prolonged spell of stagnation, public investment in agriculture at constant 1993-94 prices has increased from about Rs 5,000 crore in 2002-03 to around Rs 11,000 crore in 2005-06. This is very significant since public investment, albeit accounting for around 30 per cent of total investment, had a multiplier stimulative impact on private investment.

Second, he said, there seems to be an improvement in the terms of trade for agriculture as well, implying that the ratio of price indices for outputs vis-À-vis for inputs including capital required for their investments and fo r the goods and commodities they consume, has moved upwards. “This has to be sustained not just through increases in minimum support price but more crucially through productivity gains,” he noted.

Third, Mr Ramesh said, there was an explosion in the supply of credit to agriculture and the increase in supply translates into more than doubling in the past three years. Fourth, a number of far-reaching new institutional and policy initiatives have been taken such as Bharat Nirman with its focus on irrigation, rural infrastructure, the National Horticulture Mission and the National Rainfed Agriculture Authority.

He said that massive replanting programmes were on the cards for tea, coffee, rubber, pepper, cardamom, cashew and coconut. He said Parliament had enacted a law that allowed for negotiable warehouse receipt systems which enabled farmers to use grain as collateral for short-term credit and help them avoid immediate post-harvest, low price sales. He said that there were also some areas where there has been a structural shift, much like what supervened in rice and wheat. Cotton production has increased by over 80 lakh bales, which was about three and a half times in the previous five years. Horticulture has been growing markedly in the case of grapes in Maharashtra. Soyabean in Madhya Pradesh and Maharshtra is another instance of a shift in productivity.

Tracing a slower diversification of the rural employment structure as being at the core of the agricultural crisis, Mr Ramesh said that “our rigid labour laws and hassle-intensive environment for factories, our policies on small-scale reservation and our non-technology, non-market approach to the KVIC and our woeful investment in rural infrastructure have all prevented a faster diversification of the rural employment structure”. He said the only sustainable, productivity-enhancing long-term solution to the country’s farm crisis must be found not on farms but off farms, given the fragmentation of land holdings and demographic pressures.

On agri exports, he said that the country must grasp increased market opportunities elsewhere in the area of organic agriculture for which there is a premium. Though exports of tea, coffee, rubber and spices account for around one per cent of the total merchandise exports, they were crucial from the point of livelihood security of lakhs of families belonging to the weaker sections. That is why it was important to enhance productivity quickly because our global standing has slipped.

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‘Ever-green revolution on farm front feasible’