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ABSTRACT

Agriculture, the life-line of rural India, makes it the second-largest food producer in the world. However, there are many challenges in the form of rapidly increasing population, changing climatic conditions and biotic and abiotic stresses, which need to be addressed to enhance the food security for the next generations. Precision in terms of selection and amount of inputs, their optimum utilization and conserving the natural and man-made resources are the important pillars which can bring about the long term sustainability. In this article we have presented a snapshot on addressing various challenges to Indian agriculture, need of the other revolutions along with the importance of precision, conservation, issues related to sustainable food security in near future and possible solutions to attain the same.

Keywords: Conservation, Precision, Remote sensing, Sustainability

Our India, a predominantly agrarian country, deserves commendation in providing food to the ever-growing population since ages. Agriculture, the life-line of rural India, makes it the second-largest food producer in the world and sustains nearly 18% of the world population on just 2.3% of geographical area with only 9% of the land globally available for agriculture. Furthermore, Indian agriculture is mainly considered as subsistence agriculture, which causes concerns for food and nutritional security. This coupled with water table depletion, greenhouse gas emission and surface and groundwater contamination have pushed agricultural sector to a position of dire distress which has gravely affected small and marginal farmers (Mukherjee, 2016). Moreover, it is a risky job as just one crop failure, either due to environmental stress or due to some other reasons and most of the farmers lose their sustenance. Therefore, our agricultural sector needs numerous changes and this decade will therefore be marked by strong efforts by our government directed towards technologically empowering our farmers through modern farming practices to increase yield per hectare ensuring food and income security (Bruinsma, 2011, Mukherjee et al., 2012).

 

How to address the current challenges of Indian agriculture?

Within another few decades, the agriculture sector would have to confront a few dangers and challenges along with the issues exuding from the imbalanced demand-supply process. Seed, fertilizers, and water systems are a few of the vital inputs in farming, but the sadder portion of it is that regularly the agriculturists are not able to procure the inputs. A few of the crops, like rice, require impressively higher sum of water, causing the lowering down of the water table, soil salinity, and deterioration of water quality. Hence, it is important to develop the water-demanding crops like rice within the places with plenty of precipitation and/or within the zones having a shallow water table. Additionally, to overcome the problem of declining efficiency and to reverse the trend of declining productivity, we soon need a rainbow revolution, shifting the regular wheat-rice crop pattern to nitrogen fixing pulses and legumes. There will be replacement of low performance varieties of rice, coarse cereals and pulses by HYV. More numbers of advanced cold storage facilities will be built across the country to reduce the huge losses of perishable commodities occurring now-a-days (up to 16 % of total agricultural produce) (ICAR, 2006).

Studies show that approximately 121 million hectares of land in the country is affected by soil erosion, 8.4 million hectares by high salinity and deforestation, and the situation is worsening day by day. Problems are exacerbated by the application of unbalanced chemical fertilizers, as well as the over-extraction of some nutrients from the soil by crops, leading to severe nutrient deficiencies in the soil and declining quality and product value. As the Boundaries Act stipulates that “subsistence farming produces less yields and supports less livelihoods”, we need to focus on maximum recycling of the resources so that use of external inputs can be minimized (Jaggard et al., 2010). With population growth, demand for food and other commodities will increase, and it is estimated that demand for food will increase to 345 million tons by 2030. Therefore, grain production should be increased by 5 million tons per year. This is where science and technology can help to improve the productivity of high and sustainable agriculture. Precision tools like GIS, GPS, remote sensing, grid soil sampling, laser land levelling and leaf colour chart can increase the use efficiency of the inputs. Conservation agriculture tools like zero and minimum tillage, mulching and scientific crop rotation ensure the maximum recycling of the resources eventually imparting sustainability to the system.

To improve the quality of agriculture, Attracting Rural Youths in Agriculture (ARYA) project can act as a tool to promote skill development of rural youths in aggregation, grading, packaging & value additions and upgrade skills in servicing/maintenance of farm machineries, catering, tour guide services for Agro-Ecotourism sector, etc. To encourage young minds and attract entrepreneurs in agriculture, establishment of world class agricultural institutes and its amalgamation with research laboratories is required in future. Adoption of advanced foreign technologies is prerequisite for making India highly competent in the global agricultural markets (Chand et al., 2011).

Second revolution in Indian agriculture: Need of the day

Although the green revolution played a key role in increasing farm productivity and food security, we now need to implement sustainable transformation strategies by embracing environmental conservation precision practices including integrated nutrient, pest and natural resource management to adapt. To become a powerhouse in agriculture globally, India needs another revolution in agriculture in next two decades. Agricultural growth is known to cut poverty faster than any other approach and 4% agricultural growth is requisite for achieving 10 % growth in GDP (as per National Agricultural Policy). So, the government is likely to bring forth new agricultural policies, changing the total agricultural scenario (ICAR, 2011). Three levers that will drive the growth of agriculture in this decade are increasing crop yields, improving export opportunities and expanding the scope of processing industries. There will be a shift from a “programmes and schemes” approach to a “mission mode” that will enable excellent partnerships and investments by both public and private sectors (Chand et al., 2011). High value agriculture will catalyse the next wave of agricultural growth and the country as a whole.

Addressing issues related to sustainable food security

In order to address food security issues and feed the growing population, we need to make a shift from conventional practices of farming to better, efficient and sustainable agriculture through better management of natural resources (Capper et al., 2009). As natural resources continue to deteriorate, much attention is needed to develop the agricultural sector, and the tools and techniques of “molecular biology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology” have the potential to address many future challenges. In addition to crop farming, animal husbandry, poultry, fishing, aquaculture, and post-harvest processing and value addition to agricultural products are very important (Evenson, 2004). This can help farmers to use more productive crops, better control pests, use wastewater, and produce more nutritious food from local sources. Government support can be equally valuable by promoting research and development in agricultural technologies, the provision of timely agri-inputs, waste reduction infrastructure, and agricultural e-marketing (IAASTD, 2009).

Numerous challenges concerned with climate change are appearing in the way of agriculture as it is prone to more frequent natural calamities like drought and flood, particularly in India. By the end of this century, the global temperature is likely to increase by 1.8-4.0° C, which might lead to more frequent extreme environmental conditions. Therefore, to produce sufficient nutritious food for the continuously growing population under the changing climatic conditions and diminishing natural resources, a challenging task in front of the agricultural scientists is to focus on the climate-resilient agriculture, conserving the stress-tolerant genetic resources of plants and animals, and minimizing the wastage of food materials by post-harvest processing technologies. Towards the protection of the environment, efforts should be made on the adoption of integrated pest management, developing more effective and safer pesticides, and promoting bio-safety/security components in the country (Deaton and Dreze, 2009).

Conclusion

Needless to say, that agriculture will be the radar driving the ship of economy in this decade. Therefore, better governance models, strategic thinking, thoughtful actions that can enable empowerment of states in agriculture should be the major focus in the next two decades. Promotion of farmer–industry interaction and lessening barriers on farm gate access will be the most important initiative that can bring agricultural sustainability in future. Striking efforts have to be made to sustain the Indian agriculture and to maintain and sustain food and nutritional security in near future. Also, it is critically important to improve skills of farmers to adopt recent techniques for sustainable and precision farming (Bhattacharyya, S., & Mukherjee, 2019). Since, Indian farming rely highly on the natural resources thus, it is important to give more importance to the zero tillage practices, conservation agriculture, organic farming, integrated nutrient and weed management and to collaborate with various public sectors for overall growth and development.

References

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Bhattacharyya, S., & Mukherjee, A. (2019). Importance of skill development in Indian agriculture. ICT and social media for skill development in agriculture. Today & Tomorrow’s Printers and Publishers, New Delhi, 47-62.

Capper, J., Cady, R. & Bauman, D. (2009). Demystifying the environmental sustainability of food production. Proceedings of the Cornell Nutrition Conference for Feed Manufacturers 2009 (http://agricola.nal.usda. gov/).

Chand, R., Kumar, P., & Kumar, S. (2011). Total factor productivity and role of public sector research and education in agricultural growth during post-green revolution period. National Center for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi.

Deaton, A. & Dreze, J. (2009). Food and Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. xliv no 7 (February).

Evenson, R. (2004). Food and Population: D. Gale Johnson and the Green Revolution. Economic Development and Cultural Change. 52, 3.

IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development). (2009). Global Report. Mclntyre, Baverly, D., Herren, R. Hans, Wakhungu, Judi, and Watson, Robert, T.(eds). USA, Washington, DC.

ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) (2006) Guidelines for Intellectual Property Management and Technology Transfer/ Commercialization. New Delhi, India.

ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) (2011) Vision 2030. Compilation: Dr P.K. Joshi (Director, NAARM, Hyderabad, India).

Jaggard, K., Qi A. & Ober, E. (2010). Possible changes to arable crop yields by 2050. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 365, 2835-2851.

Mukherjee, A., Bahal, R., Burman, R. R., Dubey, S. K., & Jha, G. K. (2012). Constraints in Privatised Agricultural Technology Delivery System of Tata Kisan Sansar. Journal of Global Communication, 5(2), 155-159.

Mukherjee, A. (2016). Prioritization of problems in integrated agriculture: a case of Rampur village in sub humid region of Eastern India. Indian Research Journal of Extension Education, 15(1), 53-59.

 

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