What Ails Indian Agriculture

by Prabhat Kumar

Aug. 29, 2007

I was just going through this news. I went on to further delve in this matter of demand and supply of cereal grains in India. India had produced a record 76.37 million tons of wheat in 2000, but since then the wheat production has declined. This forced India to import 5 million tons from Australia in 2006. The year 2007 didn't present a different story as tender for procuring 0.5 million tons has already been in place few months back. The government has further issued tender to buy around 4 million tons of wheat from other countries to maintain the buffer of 15 million tons. With a decline in wheat production on a worldwide basis, the government will need to buy wheat at a rate of around Rs. 1200/quintal. The reserve 11 million which the government has procured from farmers was bought at a minimum support price (MSP) of Rs. 750/quintal. Is it fare to our farmers who put their sweat and blood to produce as much as they can? I think it would have made more sense if government might have predicted the price in international market and fixed the MSP a bit higher. I guess that would have surely made India sit with sufficient buffer of wheat. The MSP of wheat has not changed much over the past few years which along with the average increase of temperature during filling seasons, and reduced use of fertilizer is responsible for the decline in wheat production.

The other matter on this topic involves the stringent quality norms of Indian government for importing wheat. One will be surprised to know that the wheat produced in USA doesn't pass the quality norms of the Indian government. As against a limit of 100 weeds in a shipment of 200 kg, wheat which USA imports has 12,000 weeds, which is way too high. Wheat from USA also has 21 weeds alien to India. Therefore, its good that the wheat is not important from USA. But, whats surprising is that fact that 5 million tons of wheat imported from Australia had 11 weeds which is alien to India. Should one expect this double standard policy of Indian government?

Wheat is just an example. The same story might happen with rice or maize. From the FAO website, I found out the yields of wheat, rice, and maize to be 1048, 1214, and 854 kg/acres respectively. Just to quench curious me, Highest yields of wheat, rice, and maize worldwide are 3692 (Netherland), 4133 (Australia), and 9311 (Jordan) kg/acres respectively. Rather than issuing the tenders for the deficit crops, shouldn't the government give consulting to the highest yielding countries so that we have enough supply of cereal grains to feed our people? Some of the practices can be adopted without even getting the know how of countries like Netherlands and Australia. After learning all this, I am not sure how much of a success are initiatives like e-chaupal are.

Some of the practices which can be adopted include laser assisted land leveling which has been found to increase the yield of the crop, reduce irrigation requirement, and reduce fertilizer requirement. Efforts should be made for the adoption of conservation agriculture by our farmers. Three main principles of conservation agriculture include minimum soil disturbance (no till farming), permanent residue soil cover, and crop rotation. These efforts along with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) can only prevent us from the shame of importing cereal grains from country like USA which has less than 1% of their population involved in farming.

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