Need of second green revolution in India

It seemed in the 1960s that Thomas Malthus, a scholar of demography, had been correct that world's population was expanding too quickly to feed itself. In Indian prospects, the country’s booming population was on course to exceed its ability to nourish itself and was barely got by on hand-to-mouth imports. With the threat of famine hulking, the Indian Government looked for help abroad. First, it imported grain gave by the US. Later, it imported recently created wheat and grain varieties to grow in its own soil and finally first green revolution came into existence which drove out hunger from India. The green revolution introduced high-yielding varieties of rice and wheat, boomed the use of irrigation, pesticides and fertilizers, and metamorphosed the northwestern plains into breadbasket. But the revolution always came at a cost. Recent studies have established that intensive farming over the past 50 years has caused a “massive depletion of water reserves and minerals”. Excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides had ruined the land quality. Country produces 25 per cent of the world’s pulses, 11 per cent of its sugar, 22 per cent of its rice and 11 per cent of its wheat but Indian Government still import, although occasionally, these commodity which indicate toward gap between growth rate of our production and population. So today's crisis is totally different from the 1960s that is why It was not supposed to be solved in older way. The Green Revolution created a sense of elation that we have resolved our production problem. But now we have a plateau in production and productivity. We have a problem of under investment in rural infrastructure and for after few decade of negligence now we are realizing the need of a second green revolution “so that the spectra of food shortages are banished from the horizon once again.” But most important question is that what should be way to bring this second green revolution.

We must introduce two major changes in our future second green revolution- first in farmers’ life and second in agriculture itself. First of all we have to change our idea about agriculture. We have to understand this fact that only farmers can agriculture becomes truly sustainable. So we have to improve their life status and their mind set up. For this purpose we have to introduce different schemes to accelerate the rural infrastructure to improve the agriculture product supply chains. We should try to make them technology, capital and subsidy rich. So our Public policies must be design to promote conservation, cultivation, consumption and commerce. In other words we have to stop the farmers to quit farming by providing them much more facility.

Secondly, we do not need an agriculture which is dependent upon external inputs. We do not need an agriculture that demolishes efficiency, equity and environment. We don't need agriculture where farmers are reducing to beggary and the service providers enjoy the benefits. We do not need agriculture where farmers always think of quitting farming. We have to change our agriculture pattern. We need to improve farm productivity in eternity without ecological harm? Agricultural scientists always talked about ‘sustainable agricultural intensification’ but unfortunately ‘sustainable’ and ‘intensification’ are two conflicting word and we can’t practice both simultaneously. An intensive agriculture can’t be sustainable any more. To gain these goals, there is need for a small farm management revolution, which cans consequence in conferring the power and economy of scale on producers both in the production and post-harvest phases of farming. At the production end, there is need for integrating frontier technologies with utmost precautions. We should promote those Agricultural practices which are based on minimal soil disturbance, organic residue retention and crop rotations. For this we may switch to conservation agriculture which will help us to shift to zero tillage or minimal tillage and therefore help in conserving natural resources.

In other words, at a time when world over there is an increasing realization that chemical farming has destroyed soil health and in turn devastated agriculture, there is no need to blind copying of faulty technologies to resurrect agriculture. Our first green revolution was all about increasing cropping intensity, increasing per-unit productivity but our second green revolution must be start in different way. The green revolution of the sixties helped to gain self-confidence in our agricultural capability but second one would about balance between nature and human also. Apparently, if farm economics and ecology go wrong, nothing else will go right in agriculture and nation. So in the this century's conservation farming and green technology will bring about positive change that could allow India to become a healthier and happier.

P.S. This post is already published by Merinews. But i would love to share it on my blog also but with different title.