Key Concepts

1. Greatly increasing Agricultural / Horticultural production, through sustainable practices is essential to meet the demand of food for our ever growing population and their ever growing demand for more proteins and calories and fruits.
2. Keeping Agro costs low means increasing Farm productivity and, in view of the Population shift to Urban areas and the resulting increased costs of scarce Agricultural Labour, increasing mechanization. Also, migration of youth seeking Urban employment leaves the land in care of the very old or the very young. Hence, requiring changes in tenancy and ownership rules and promotion of non-farm rural business to also, keep the families together by providing employment in the small towns is also, necessary.
3. The need to revive our many traditional seed varieties and their vitality and maintain our crop diversity must be recognized and encouraged. It is perhaps true that GM Technology has many benefits, but the danger of un-intended Hybridization in adjacent crops, increasing resistance of the pests to the chemicals used, the vulnerability of crop mono-culture and increased dependence of farmers on the GM seed producers due to the ‘Terminator’ gene added in by the Seed Companies only to protect their own commercial interests, and also, on newer chemicals, are all ever present in GM Technologies and need to be addressed before allowing wide spread application of such technologies.GM crop technology can surely be developed without the ‘Terminator’ gene, thus making the farmer a partner rather than just a customer to be taken advantage of. The CRISPR – CAS 9 gene editing technology may be used for better GM products. R & D in this field should be encouraged and led by the Government Laboratories in Agricultural Universities and even Private Corporations. However, the resultant plants should not be patented or if allowed it should be for not more than say 3 years. Alternatively the Government can buy out the technology from Private Corporations and offer it free to the Agriculturists as a subsidy.
4. Many International Organizations such as IFAP / UNCTAD/ UNEP have determined that neither GM Technologies nor large scale Industrialized Farming can alone meet our future food needs. Only sustainable Agro practices of “Small Farmers, improving on traditional knowledge and maintaining Plant diversity can do so.” Ofcourse, new technologies, including good GM and gene-editing Technology will help, and ‘Small’ would mean economically sized as appropriate to the location and type of soil. 50 to 100 Hectares of horticultural or hilly area farms or even up to 1000 Hectares in plains could be considered small in comparison to farm sizes abroad.
5. In order to extract the last grain of output from the small land holdings, the concepts of some portion of the land being kept fallow to allow for proper regeneration of soil and, of check dams and ponds for rain harvesting and proper water management etc, are today forgotten.
6. Instead, the farmers have fallen prey to the extensive marketing strategies of the Fertilizer and Seed and other so-called Agro-product Companies, who receive their subsidy directly from the Government, to increase the use of such products to compensate for the lack of soil vitality. Leading to pollution of the ground water and also, of the water flow into lakes and rivers and thus to the death of aquatic life therein.
7. As it is, the availability of labour, in these days of Government subsidized labour schemes, is either very scarce and, if at all available, is becoming increasingly unaffordable. This situation is becoming worse day by day.The Landowners in many regions now entirely dependent on migrant agricultural labour presume that unlike the locals, these migrant workers will not strive or aspire for their children to be better off, and hence, fail to see that by at most the next generation such migrant labour will also, no longer be available. In such circumstances, increased production can only be met by industrialized / mechanized farming.
8. Optimization of Farm / Agro production should be considered under 3 scales of operation;

1. 1. Land intensive – grains and other bulk agro-products
   2. Capital intensive – processed and Green-house agro-products
   3. Labour intensive – vegetables, fruits, tea, aquaculture and such products.

   Specific plans, policies and regulations should be worked out and implemented for each of them as appropriate.

Specific plans, policies and regulations should be worked out and implemented for each of them as appropriate.

9. Improving farm profitability, would also, greatly reduce the emigration to urban areas by the rural youth, by providing off farm employment in those areas itself, in the many job opportunities that would open up, once the ability to spend is present. These will be the many jobs in the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) enterprises that will be set up to meet the needs of the farms, or even in the schools, colleges, clinics, department stores and entertainment facilities that would be coming up there once the spending power increases. Additionally even sorting, cleaning and packing operations can be encouraged to provide employment to rural women. This too is the aim of the present Government.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11