Changing agriculture
Short cut
According to an assessment of United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), India will continue to face problems on the food front, but for different reasons in the next decade. One of them is that increase in food grains output, which was a prominent feature for the 2005-15 decade will be relatively less in the decade up to 2025. The reason is that a saturation point has been reached in terms of acreage as well as per hectare yields. It is also being said that the stress on demand for cereals will go down as the purchasing power of the majority of people will be on the rise and as a result the demand for the kind of food will diversify, moving from cereals to fruits and vegetables. But there is also the flip side to it. As the cereal output will have peaked, food inflation too will remain in place. This would affect a small section of people who would be dependent on cereals, but they would not have the purchasing power. This would require appropriate state intervention to avert a crisis. Interestingly, this news comes at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a five-nation visit to Africa. For more than a decade now, food planners in India have been toying with the idea of buying land in Africa for raising food crops for the country. As a matter of fact, chief minister of the then united Andhra Pradesh was seriously pursuing the plan of sending some of the Andhra farmers to Uganda for pursuing agriculture. The idea did not work out. It seems however that India would have to seriously envision a future scenario when the food needs of the country will have to be met in new and innovative ways.
Interestingly, this news comes at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a five-nation visit to Africa. For more than a decade now, food planners in India have been toying with the idea of buying land in Africa for raising food crops for the country. As a matter of fact, chief minister of the then united Andhra Pradesh was seriously pursuing the plan of sending some of the Andhra farmers to Uganda for pursuing agriculture. The idea did not work out. It seems however that India would have to seriously envision a future scenario when the food needs of the country will have to be met in new and innovative ways.
There are two other alternatives proposed to fend off the extreme suggestion that India will have to look far afield to feed its people. The first is that there is much land that can be brought under agriculture by extending irrigation facilities. DNA
