22 July 2011
No. 1476
Prime Minister Singh with Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar at ICAR’s 83rd Foundation Day (Source: http://www.thehindu.com), underlining the need for a second green revolution to ensure food and nutritional security and improved livelihoods of smallholder farmers.
Two per cent farm growth rate necessary to ensure food security
Prime Minister Singh calls for India’s second green revolution India produced record levels of food grain in 2010-2011 but would still need a second green revolution to feed its growing population, India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on 16 July. Addressing the 83rd Foundation Day of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research in New Delhi, the Prime Minister underlined the necessity for a steady growth rate of 2% per annum in food production through the current decade to meet the projected need of 280 million tons by 2020-21 and to ensure food security.
D
r Singh saw the task as enormous, looking back at the fact that farm production had grown by just 1% each year from 1997 to 2007. Although farm production had regained momentum by growing at 3% in the 11th Plan period, this was below the 4% target. Congratulating scientists on ensuring selfsufficiency in food grains through a record 241 million tons in 2010-11, Dr Singh nonetheless said that the unmet targets in recent years had resulted in unacceptable levels of food price inflation. Expressing concern over the plateauing of agricultural productivity over the years, the country’s dependence on imports for pulses and edible oils, and the prevalence of under-nutrition
among women and children, Dr Singh said the country needed a more broad-based, inclusive and sustainable second green revolution and urged agricultural scientists to meet demand without depleting resources further. Dr Singh suggested increasing the expenditure on agricultural research and development from the current 0.67% of the agricultural GDP to at least 2-3% by 2020 and re-examining the architecture of agricultural extension services. Dr Singh said the success of the second green revolution would hinge on management of water and climate changes. Underlining the critical role of rainfed agriculture, he said it was important to explicitly embrace to page 2 ...4