Integrated Nutrient Management: Soil health cards for sustainable agriculture

Application of fertilisers based on soil testing taken up on a mission mode is creating a quiet revolution

At the dawn of Independence, India was a food deficit nation, largely dependent on imports to feed her people. Faced with famines, stagnant production and rising imports, the adoption of the Green Revolution in the mid-sixties was inevitable. It entailed introduction of high-yielding semi-dwarf wheat and paddy varieties that were responsive to increased application of fertiliser and water.

The leveraging of agricultural research and technology proved successful. India, in 2018-19, produced 284.95 million tonnes (mt) of foodgrains — roughly 3.5 times the pre-Green Revolution level — and that included 23.40 mt of pulses. Moreover, our agriculture has diversified, so much so that production of horticultural crops (fruits and vegetables), at 313.85 mt in 2018-19, exceeded that of foodgrains! The country is today self-sufficient in all major agri-commodities, barring oilseeds.

However, the above output increases have also come at the cost of our natural resources, especially soil and water. Keeping in view the deleterious effects of the rampant and imbalanced use of chemical fertilisers, a unique programme of Soil Health Cards (SHC) was launched by the Central government on February 19, 2015, laying the foundation for evidence-based integrated nutrient management in Indian agriculture. The latest Union Budget for 2020-21 has also laid emphasis on the balanced use of all kinds of fertilisers.

The SHC programme, implemented over the last five years, assesses soil fertility in terms of the availability of key nutrients — primary (nitrogen, phosphorous and potash) as well as secondary (sulphur) and micro (iron, zinc, copper, manganese and boron) — and physical parameters (electrical conductivity, pH and organic carbon). The SHCs issued to individual farmers also carry a prescription of the right dosage of nutrients based on both deficiency and crops grown in the soils of their particular area. In Phase I of the programme (2015-17), 10.74 crore cards were distributed, with another 11.45 crore being issued in Phase II (2017-19). The programme basically advocates judicious use of chemical fertilisers, together with organic manure and bio-fertilisers, in order to improve the health of the soil and its productivity.

The crucial infrastructure requirement for the programme has been provided through the setting up of 429 new static soil testing labs (STL) and strengthening of 800 existing ones, apart from 102 mobile STLs, 8,752 mini-STLs and 1,562 village-level STLs. As a result, the total soil testing capacity has increased from 1.73 crore to 3.01 crore samples per year. The programme itself has evolved into a mission mode project, to instill belief among farmers in the prescriptions and application of fertilisers as per the SHCs issued to them. As a follow-up to the two phases, model villages are now being developed, one in each of the country’s 6,954 blocks. Further, testing at individual holding level is being done, as against grid-based analyses so far, along with SHC-based demonstration of application of fertilisers and farmers’ fairs for raising awareness.

The SHCs are only the first link in ensuring healthy soils and production of safe and nutritious food. The receptivity of farmers to the programme has led to the emergence of ‘Mitti ke Doctor’ (soil health specialists) and even women’s self-help groups that undertake soil testing at village level. Andhra Pradesh currently has ‘Raithu Bharosa Kendras (farmers’ trust centres)’ that offer integrated testing facilities, including of soil. The Mitti ke Doctor of Jharkhand, mainly comprising rural women, are revolutionising the delivery of soil testing and other interventions at the doorstep of farmers, to encourage them to switch to balanced fertiliser and pesticide application for sustainable agriculture without compromising productivity. The SHC programme has also attracted global attention. India is assisting Nepal in setting up soil-testing facilities and capacity building for integrated nutrient management and certified organic farming. These also figure in India’s initiatives in South-South Cooperation focusing on African countries.

The Fertiliser (Control) Order 1985 has been amended from time to time to register new nutrient products and formulations. With growing demand for organic produce, the FCO is now also incorporating bio-fertilisers, organic fertilisers and non-edible de-oiled cakes, in addition to chemical fertilisers. The main sources of bio-fertilisers are microorganisms such nitrogen-fixing azotobacter, phosphate-solubilising bacteria and mycorrhizae fungi that promote uptake of nutrients by plants.

The contribution of chemical fertilisers to greenhouse gases is an important reason for inclusion of organic farming within the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture under India’s National Action Plan for Climate Change. Nano-fertilisers are another emerging category of products with potential to reduce the requirement of urea and other conventional chemical fertilisers. The nano-nitrogen, nano-zinc and nano-copper introduced by the Indian Farmers’ Fertiliser Cooperative recently for on-field trials are examples of such fertilisers that allow controlled release of nutrients. These can significantly increase nutrient use efficiency and bring down their runoff into groundwater and water bodies in the vicinity of fields.

Another potential tool for water and soil conservation is ‘biochar’, which also converges with the National Bamboo Mission. This high-quality charcoal produced by pyrolysis (decomposition at elevated temperatures) of ‘waste’ bamboo in the absence of oxygen can be used either as such or mixed with organic additives in a suitable ratio. Biochar can enhance crop yields by 5-40%, friendly mycorrhizal fungi by 40%, nutrient retention by 50% and water retention capacity of soils by 20%. It would, thereby, reduce the requirement of irrigation and promote resistance to various fungal and nematode diseases. By enduring in the soil for thousands of years, biochar also helps in mitigation of climate change via carbon sequestration.

In a nutshell, the judicious application of fertilisers based on SHC prescription has multifold benefits in terms of improved soil health, safe food and mitigating climate change. Balanced use will also reflect in reduced water consumption, while at the same time protecting water bodies from run-off pollution. Farmer awareness about balanced fertilisation is being stepped up through the coordinated efforts of the departments of agriculture, cooperation & farmers’ welfare and fertilisers, besides the network of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s Krishi Vigyan Kendras. Farmer can, thus, be enabled to fulfill the mantra of ‘Swasth Dhara, Khet Hara’ (if the soils are healthy, the fields shall be green)!

(The writer is Additional Secretary at Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India)

Source: Indian Express, 20/02/2020

India must re-evaluate its agroforestry policy

The moment a piece of land comes under any kind of plantation, there will be questions about issues of access and community rights.

India on Monday assured the ongoing climate change conference at Katowice in Poland that the country is committed to meeting its climate goals. In 2015, the country, as part of the requirement ahead of the finalisation of the Paris Agreement, listed a series of specific actions it would take to fight climate change. One of the important promises that India made was that it would create 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of additional carbon sinks through extensive afforestation. A key strategy to achieve this goal will be to promote agroforestry or farm forestry, says a report in the Hindustan Times.

This focus on agroforestry, a judicious integration of tree species with agricultural crops and/or animals, is not unexpected since the practice is now recognised as an important one to restore degraded land and improve farmers’ incomes. Trees are valuable and profitable parts of agricultural systems because they provide timber, food and fuel, make soils more fertile, and protect the ecosystem services that agriculture depends upon. Agroforestry, however, is not unknown in India; it is practised across the country. But many farmers are not keen to take it up because of a lack of information on tree rotation and also the legal aspects involved in the trade of matured trees. To streamline the process, the Centre came up with the National Agroforestry Policy in 2014 to bring together various agroforestry programmes of different ministries under one platform.

While the focus on agroforestry to meet the twin objectives of meeting climate goals and improving the livelihood of farmers is laudable, there are concerns. One of the strongest criticisms is the emphasis on involving private players in the afforestation efforts, which leads to the question of benefit sharing between them and the landowners/community. Second, experts say the policy is trying to convert agricultural land into a manufacturing enterprise, which is not an ecologically sound solution. This is because agroforestry, which has a commercial motive at heart, usually leads to planting one particular species of tree. Third, an agricultural plot is not about farming only; it also supports different kinds of wildlife and communities such as pastoralists. The moment a piece of land comes under any kind of plantation, there will be questions about issues of access and community rights.

If India wants agroforestry to be the route to meet its climate goals, these serious concerns need to be sorted out first.

Source: Hindustan Times, 4/12/2018

The price is wrong

Getting the right remuneration is the most critical issue facing farmers. Government must provide policy, institutional framework for procurement.

The farmer and his income is an important theme of discussion these days. A lot is being written on ways to increasing, and doubling, the farmers’ incomes by the year 2022. Viewed arithmetically, the income of a farmer is a function of three things — the cost of cultivation, production and sale proceeds of the produce. The formula stated in layman’s terms in Hindi is “laagat ghate, upaj badhe aur upaj ka sahi daam mile”.

The cost of cultivation can be influenced by the farmer in a limited manner. Farmers can reduce the consumption of inputs per unit of land by using a better package of practices. However, the rising cost of inputs like seeds, phosphatic and potassic fertilisers, pesticides, etc is not in the hands of farmers. And to my mind, that is why subsidy for inputs remains important.

By using high-yielding variety seeds, mechanisation, fertilisers, irrigation facilities, micro-nutrients and the correct package of practices, it is possible to increase productivity and production. Areas where the yields are substantially less than the national average are the low hanging fruits where, with some concentrated effort and use of technology, it should be possible to enhance the yields quickly.

Getting the right price for their produce is the most critical issue for farmers today. In the rabi and kharif conferences in the divisions and the districts, which farmers attend in large numbers, the point of discussion has shifted from a shortage of seeds and fertilisers 10 years ago to securing remunerative prices for the produce. The challenge for the farmers is that when production goes up, the price tends to fall. This results in zero or very little net gain for the farmers.

The government procures wheat and paddy for the public distribution system. Hence, a large number of farmers sowing these are able to obtain the minimum support price. The government’s intervention in these commodities serves to shore up their price in the open market as well. Sugarcane farmers are also able to access an assured market through the system of reservation of cane for the sugar mills and the state advisory price (SAP). But for a large number of crops including oilseeds and pulses, farmers are not able to get remunerative prices. The market yard price of pulses and oilseeds have generally ruled above the MSP but during the last kharif and rabi we have seen that their market yard price remained much below the MSP. This makes a strong case for governmental intervention by providing an enabling policy environment, a robust institutional framework and a vibrant regulatory regime.

The government has increased the MSP of kharif crops substantially for this season, which has come as a shot in the arm for the farmers. But to increase their income substantially, marketing infrastructure and institutions need to be strengthened. The recently announced Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA) is an important step towards securing remunerative price (read MSP) for the farmers. This provides for three methods of procurement: (i) Price Support Scheme (PSS), (ii) Price Deficiency Payment Scheme (PDPS), and (iii) Private Procurement and Stockist Scheme (PPSS).

A quantity restriction of 25 per cent of the total production of a state has been put for obtaining central assistance under all the three schemes. Any quantity procured beyond this limit will have to be funded by the state’s own resources. PDPS has been tried by Madhya Pradesh during the last year and the feedback has been mixed. PPSS is a new concept with a whiff of freshness but it needs to be seen how it plays out on the ground. PDPS and PPSS have been allowed only for the procurement of oilseeds whereas for all other MSP crops, PSS will be the main instrument. That brings us to the age-old Price Support Scheme, which can help the states provide remunerative price to the farmers for MSP crops other than wheat and paddy. Coarse cereals are to be procured by Food Corporation of India and will have to be distributed under the PDS. The procurement of coarse cereals will also be an issue of concern as the MSP of coarse cereals has been enhanced substantially.

Procurement under the PSS for pulses and oilseeds has not been very successful as there is a lack of a robust institutional arrangement and a well-thought-out strategy to offload the procured material. However, with some steps, this can prove to be very effective.

First, the mechanism under PSS needs to be strengthened. Currently, the procurement takes place through state government agencies on behalf of NAFED, which itself is a weak organisation. Farmers are not able to get the sale proceeds in time and so prefer to sell their produce at a lower rate in the open market. The states and Centre will have to come together and put a robust system in place in order to provide the real benefit of the MSP increase to the farmers. Second, the inclusion of pulses and millets in the PDS will result in the quick disposal of accumulated stocks. This will also lead to health gains for the population and monetary gains for the farmers.

Third, efforts to add value to the agricultural produce at the village level will have to be made. Even if primary processing like cleaning, sorting and grading of produce can be done at the farm-gate level, this will increase returns. Fourth, storage and negotiable warehouse receipt facility for farmers will have to be expanded so that they are not forced to undertake distress sales. Fifth, incentives for exports of surplus produce will expand the market for farmers.

And finally, there has to be a strategy to ensure appropriate acreage for crops so that the production is dictated by the market demand. Most farmers tend to go by the herd mentality and whichever crop gives good returns this year sees a jump in the acreage the very next year. This leads to overproduction and the price tends to crash leading to distress in the farming community.

Source: Indian Express, 5/1018

The Uncovered Last Mile

Policymakers need to ask why programmes for farmers do not reach them.

Two policy issues remain a flea in my ear and I keep reiterating them in my column. The first is: Does the money we aim to spend on farmers reach the intended beneficiaries? Alternately, do markets give them advantages on their harvest? The second is: Does the money we spend on infrastructure for farmers lead to greater opportunities for them? Both are serious issues. If there were easy solutions to these issues, as many politicians often claim, the exploitation of the farming community would have stopped long ago.

When I worked with the government, I had a habit which I had picked up as a very young chairman of the Agricultural Price Commission (now called the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices). The agriculture ministry’s data office collects information about the prices of several crops in mandis across the country. This data is constantly improved, the last time based on the recommendations of a committee I was privileged to chair. I always hunt for “price quotes” below the MSP. I can track this only through financial newspapers — topical price quotes are made available only to policy makers every morning and I am not one of them. Some of the language papers are particularly good at giving such information.

So, if you looked at them with a trained eye, you might, for instance, get to know that moong was selling at one-third to two-fifth below the MSP at centres in Karnataka. This started in Bellary and then spread like wildfire to many districts. Local officials kept pleading with the central agencies to intervene. But many of the latter did not have the funds. The high MSP declared with the intention of covering 50 per cent additional over costs made their life more difficult, as funding had to be spread thin.

The problem spread to adjoining districts in Maharashtra. The trader was making a killing in the agricultural markets. He had the money and knew that when the agencies get the money, he would supply them moong. The same problem hit cultivators of tur, a staple in Western India. Here, again, there were widespread reports of sales below the declared prices.

My next story pertains to another baby of my mine: The Sardar Sarovar Project. The Sardar, whose statue the prime minister will unveil on behalf of a grateful nation, was a very practical man — as the Bardoli Agitation showed. He asked Pattabhi Sitaramayya to conduct a study of the Talala taluka to work out how the colonial state was exploiting the poor. Being a statistician type, I get such studies done periodically. This means we have data for over three quarters of a century for that one block.

But apart from having a towering statue, about which the Sardar may laugh, he would want to know how the delivery of water from the Narmada is progressing. It’s been 16 years since water was diverted into the main canal, which I know is an engineering marvel, because I designed it. A branch canal in the Sardar Sarovar System is, in many cases, bigger than most main canals of irrigation projects in India and abroad.

But the kisan does not benefit from the work that we have done. Since he does not get the water, the farmer sometimes pumps it out from the branches and sub-branches of the canals — and when he is caught, he goes to jail. But 57 per cent of the minor canals are yet to be constructed and the poor farmer has no choice. He can construct the field channels — the gracious government has told him that they will do it for him, but almost a third of them have not been constructed. The endeavour will be completed in a year, it has been said. I genuinely believe with determined effort, that is possible. We have done such things in the past. The great Sardar will be happy if we do so.

Written by Yoginder K. Alagh

Source: Indian Express, 4/10/18

Risk management is the way forward for farming

If agriculturalists can benefit from price and yield variations, they will be able to build long-term resilience

Large numbers of low-income families the world over depend on agriculture as their primary source of income. Agriculture is, however, a challenging sector and several issues prevent farmers, in particular small holders, from realising greater incomes. These include low yields, weak market linkages, high price volatility, limited risk management, and poor price realisation. Given the very large numbers of people involved, addressing these concerns of farmers is an important goal of public policy. For farmers’ incomes, the keys to transformative growth are, among other things, the two areas of price and yield risk management.

Price risk management: Like other commodities, market prices of agricultural products are highly volatile. Spot, futures, forwards, and options are essential tools which accurately transmit market signals to farmers and simultaneously allow them to choose the risk management approach that is best suited for them without relying on ex-post subsidies, should markets turn adverse. A number of countries have focused on making these tools easily available to farmers.

In Australia, for example, both farmers and buyers are able to purchase the necessary forward contracts and put and call options on agricultural products directly from their banks. Here cotton growers are the most prominent users of these tools to manage price risk and around 20% of wheat growers use market price risk management techniques such as futures contracts, options, and over the counter products like swaps. Easy access to these products and services has transformed the incomes and risk exposure of these farmers allowing them to respond to market signals by purchasing the level of protection that they need at market prices and altering their cropping patterns where necessary.

In Brazil, in response to a fall in bank finance for agriculture, the Bank of Brazil introduced an instrument called Сedula de Produto Rural (CPR), a tradeable product note, which represents a promise to supply a fixed quantity of agricultural produce in the future (tradable CPR, introduced in 1994) or its future financial value (financial CPR, introduced in 2001). Farmers are able to sell CPRs to raise financing. These instruments allow them to both raise financing at a competitive price, as well as transfer the commodity price risk to the buyer. CPRs in Brazil are deemed to be to be securities and are actively traded on the commodity exchange. Commercial banks are permitted to participate in these contracts as well. The quantum of finance being raised by farmers in Brazil through this route is to the extent of 40% of total financing whereas traditional bank financing amounts only to 30%.

Yield risk management: While effective management of price risk is essential, it is also equally important for the farmer to be able to effectively manage the risks to the yield that she is able to get from her farm. Crop insurance incentivises farm investment and increases farmers’ ability to absorb shocks. However, to be effective at scale, technological tools like remote sensing and machine learning for better standardisation and quality assurance of underlying crop data are needed to streamline decision making processes between insurance providers and farmers.

In the United States, where 90% of farmland is covered by insurance, companies have started to use drone technology to gather data on insurance claims following adverse weather events that affect production. Drone footage can be assessed using machine learning and computer vision software to increase the speed, reliability and targeting of claims processing and make payouts faster. In Europe, new agricultural technology companies are offering solutions in areas such as data intelligence and processing, farm mechanisation, and robotics. By combining satellite data with artificial intelligence, weather information, and drone-based soil mapping, technology can, for example, be used to optimise planting periods, forecast crop yields, detect pests and diseases, and even help pinpoint for the government where new irrigation projects need to be located for maximum impact. For example, a recent agreement between PartnerRe, a US based, diversified reinsurer, and Farmers Edge, an American decision-agriculture company, will allow farmers to access customised insurance products with integrated precision-farming capabilities. Insurers will also benefit from a more efficient loss adjustment process.

If farmers, the world over, including in emerging economies such as India, are able to benefit from such approaches towards price and yield risk management, they will be able to build a great deal of resilience in their approaches towards agriculture while responding accurately to the signals from the wider agricultural market.

Marcella McClatchey, Anjani Bansal & Nachiket Mor are employees of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Source: Hindustan Times, 13/09/2018

What greater crisis do you want in our agriculture?, asks Deepak Pental

The geneticist and former Delhi University V-C explains why India must shed its knee-jerk opposition to GM crops

Deepak Pental is Professor of Genetics at the University of Delhi. A former vice-chancellor, he’s at the centre of a scientific storm over transgenic mustard, the first such food crop that’s been cleared by the Environment Ministry’s technical committee for release into the fields. Dr. Pental’s group has used two genes from soil bacterium (Bacillus amyloliquefaciens), called barnase and barstar, that make mustard, a self-pollinating plant, amenable to hybridisation. Hybrid plants are generally considered higher yielding than pure, native parental cultivars. Activists opposed to GM technology, however, allege that Dr. Pental’s claims on yield are inflated, and that along with barnase and barstar he employs another gene, called bar, that make the mustard herbicide-tolerant, locking farmers into certain brands of weedicides. In a wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Pental explained why such allegations are baseless and why GM technology is vital to the future of Indian agriculture. Excerpts:

You have been working on the genetic transformation of mustard for many years now and had already developed a way to make mustard hybrids without using foreign genes in 2002. Why have a new transgenic technology now?

That was DMH-1 (Dhara Mustard Hybrid-1), the only hybrid released by the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) after extensive field trials. That employed a different technique, called cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS). It’s effective but large-scale seed production isn’t possible in this system. It has problems with stability and cannot be used in many mustard lines. If we need hybrid seeds of high purity and improved production, we need a robust pollination control mechanism. A flower has male and female parts. [Mustard self pollinates] and so to make hybrids using different parental lines you need to first make the male plant sterile and in the other parent, you need to put something to restore it, so that the farmer gets fully-fertile seeds. The other aspect is how good the parental lines are. [The controversy over GM mustard] is that we are confusing the two. With the barnase-barstar system (BB system) we can keep on making newer hybrids for traits such as disease resistance and productivity, but the system is basic. Without a good system you can’t have a good hybrid seed production. We started with the observation that combining Indian and East European hybrids are more productive.

What is the difference between a CMS system and a bar-barnase-barstar system?

CMS system is a mutation that occurs naturally in plants or can be induced. It is in the mitochondria (the part of the cell that provides energy) and changes in it can induce sterility. During reproduction the plant needs more energy and the mitochondria (in CMS mutants) tends to fail, during that critical period, in the male part. However for a viable seed generation system this should only work for male sterility, and not affect other parts of the plant. Such mutants are very rare but typically they tend to have side-effects. CMS systems have been worked upon in cotton, chickpea and rice but have had mixed results. China has wonderfully exploited the CMS system for rice but that rice could never grow properly in India. I spent many years (as a scientist at The Energy Resources Institute) trying to improve CMS systems and DMH-1 was a result of that. Sometimes it wasn’t possible to restore the plant’s fecundity; sometimes it would make plants more susceptible to fungus. Finding a perfect CMS is a back breaking job and isn’t like going to a shop and buying it off.

So we thought why not try a barnase-barstar (BB) system. Here genes from soil bacterium (or ‘trans genes’ that don’t naturally occur in a species) are used to induce sterility, and later restore it.

Why is a CMS system more sought after than a BB system?

Because it doesn’t involve trans-genes. For some reason mutations (within a plant), when you don’t know which genes are affected, are considered kosher. But were you to (manually) introduce a gene, even if it’s from a natural plant source, it invites suspicion. That is the mindset under which we are working. The BB system is extremely well understood. It is one of the most brilliant pieces of R&D in plant biotechnology. We thought we should adopt it for our purposes. We know that combining particular cultivars (Indian with East European ones) could give high yielding seeds, we have a method for transforming these genes, and we knew that these genes aren’t patented in India. Our aim was that farmers should benefit from this approach. We have over the years improved this basic science and got European and American patents on aspects such as improving the male sterile lines, restoring them, etc. The patents were not for selling but just to see if the world recognises this technology upgradation. And it has. The basis of this idea has been used to improve European rapeseed and now we have upgraded it to work on mustard.

But groups say that there are already mustard lines that outyield DMH-11?

Complete lies. Why don’t they give a graph? Publish a peer-reviewed paper? All work done in ICAR is recorded and reported, and if it’s good enough, published in peer-reviewed journals. The first trials of DMH-11 were done in 2010. That time Varuna (one of its parental lines) was the national check (a standard practice in India’s agriculture system whereby certain cultivars are designated regional benchmarks). Later on, a variety called Kranti was discovered to yield more, and became the national check. We had started with Varuna and so stuck with it. The suggestion to use Varuna came from the ICAR system itself. To get an understanding of a seed’s yield from independent trials you must compare their trends, or their year-on-year profile. What we have to see is whether the hybrids are consistently yielding more than their parents. Like, for instance, is DMH-11 yielding more than Varuna? DMH-11 has the same male parent as DMH-1 (an East-European line called EH2). Only the female parent is different. DMH-11 uses transgenic technology, DMH-1 uses CMS, and for DMH-11 we used Varuna as the female. The fundamental insight is that you will get heterosis (or high-yielding hybrids) only if you cross an East European line with an Indian pure (cultivar) line. Indian-Indian crossings won’t have that effect irrespective of what technology you use.

DMH-1, that you made in 2002 and made with non-transgenic methods, out-yielded the Kranti and Varuna benchmarks. So why can’t we stick with it?

As scientists, we know DMH-1 won’t go far. Eventually [over generations] sterility breaks down, hybrid seed production is difficult. DMH-11 (that uses transgenic technology) is better to help us have a system to march forward (while producing different varieties of mustard). If people fail to understand this logic, there is nothing much I can do. Activists have gone to such a crude extent of combining the data of different, incomparable trials. That’s not done and is like the earlier instance of comparing the yield of Canadian rapeseed variety with the European ones. Both Europeans and Canadians have done wonderful breeding in rapeseed. We are the ones lagging behind. That somehow doesn’t seem to concern critics.

But are the yields of the European lines higher than our Indian mustard varieties?

They are. Indian mustard [which is in the same taxonomic family as rapeseed] is a 135-day winter crop and grown in a completely different ecology. If you grow European rapeseed here, you will get nothing. Rapeseed has a very narrow genetic base but, as far as mustard goes, we are fortunate to have a wide variety of cultivars. East European, Chinese… in fact [in our lab] we have crossed the Indian and Chinese types and it’s given us new variations that are mind-boggling. But before we utilise it and make new hybrids, there is no point in my claiming them to be wonders. We need to get at this small wonder (DMH-11) first. In general, DMH-11 generally yields 20%-30% more than its parents. Hybrids are more productive than their pure-line parents. That’s what really matters and that’s all that we claim. BB systems are stable and CMS-based systems are a scientific dead-end.

But all the European rapeseeds are based on CMS systems. Is it a global, scientific consensus that an excellent CMS system is better than a stable BB system?

The European hybrids have been developed over 30 years and they have perfected it. Moreover, it’s a choice that Europe has decided not to grow transgenics. It may be a political decision based on public sentiment. Europe is a huge importer of food. Europe doesn’t follow organic agriculture but precision agriculture. They prescribe around 10 different herbicide-combinations that farmers need to spray for those high yields [in rapeseed]. Europe excels in agrochemicals… Bayer, Syngenta, BASF are the top companies in chemistry and making molecules for pesticides, fungicides. They have chosen that path.

Are transgenic seed systems avoidable?

My point is simple. What exactly bothers critics of genetic engineering? Is it because it appears unnatural? Is it because someone is paying you to campaign against it or, is it because you believe agriculture ought to be done the way it was before the 1900s? Before nitrogenous fertilisers all agriculture was organic. This mindset bothers me a lot because it’s misleading and irrational. Every country ought follow its own, rational path. Europe doesn’t need transgenics because they don’t want to increase their area for cultivation. They don’t want to export food. They don’t have 48% of their population dependent on farming. There is, for instance, no organic cultivation in Germany. Are any of their prescribed herbicidal chemicals any less toxic? They are not desperate but India has to be because our yields are stagnating, farm incomes are not growing and we are importing ₹65,000 crore worth of edible oil.

Several European agrochemical companies have bought American seed companies. Bayer’s recent acquisition of Monsanto, for instance.

Very audacious move. China has bought Syngenta, and in one go, they have all of Syngenta’s germplasm as well as agrochemical expertise. China, like India, has been making agriculture-chemicals through generics. New molecule discovery doesn’t exist in India. We don’t want to find new, more benign agrochemicals, we don’t want genetic engineering and we slam our plant breeders. So what exactly is Indian agriculture aiming for?

Why does your plant have a third gene ‘bar’ that’s known to promote herbicide tolerance?

It’s not designed for that. That gene is required to mark out the seeds that have all the desired characteristics after the hybrid crosses are done. This is done at the lab level and doesn’t need to be sprayed by farmers in the field.

Do you think there is a false opposition between GM seeds and organic agriculture, given that the aims of both are to use minimal, chemical pesticide?

Absolutely. There’s a vested interest though I don’t know whose. Take DMH-11. It yields 25% more than the best varieties. If you want to grow it using organic practices, go ahead. There’s nothing inherently contradictory but then you must also evaluate the yields of plants grown this way. There are barely 0.6 million hectares of organic agriculture in the world. Europe might use fungicides for its own purposes but tells India, “Give us organic tea and coffee. We’ll pay you a little more money.” But they wouldn’t themselves grow anything organic. In 2010, according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation, Germany had 11.8 million ha under crops, India had 165.5 million ha, though that may be a slight underestimate. Now look at the insecticide use: Germany [uses] about 1,243.79 tonnes and India about 20,000 tonnes. Fungicides: Germany 9,670 tonnes, India 13,000 tonnes. But Germany’s per-unit consumption of the latter dwarfs India’s.

Can mindsets be easily changed? Many believe that Europe pays a premium for organic food and Indian farmers would do well cultivating it?

And in the process starve our own children? Organic farming is flawed because it’s low-yielding and may not be a problem for us urban folk but will massively hurt our average farmer. If our government says no to technology, it will be a disastrous decision and history will not forgive us for it.

GM Mustard is now in a similar situation to what Bt Brinjal was, about a decade ago. It’s been cleared by scientific groups but awaits a nod from the Environment Minister. Are you worried mustard may go the Bt Brinjal way?

I didn’t closely follow what was happening then. But the fact is that it was a good material and brinjal requires several toxic sprays. I believe it should’ve been taken through. However, every development has its own context, positives and negatives. In mustard, we’ve taken it slow. I don’t see what the environmental problem is anyway. The mustard oil doesn’t contain any protein. The barnase and barstar genes don’t express in the seed, only the bar gene does, to some extent but it poses no threat. There are, naturally, 80,000 proteins in mustard. Some expressed in abnormal quantities may be toxic but we don’t need to go as far as that. There are recommended tests and we’ve done them. That should be the end of it. I do get the sense that higher political class is committed to research and innovation. So let’s see.

There’s another concern. That once GM mustard is cleared it will open the way for other GM seeds that are protected by patents of multinational seed companies. The Indian farmer will thus be beholden to MNCs.

This is the most defeatist attitude one can have. These were the arguments during the Green Revolution, that we are opening the door to international fertiliser companies but we have subsequently built our own fertiliser companies. We have 102 agricultural institutes, 76 agricultural universities. Why have you created them? Shut them down, or recharge some of them and back the good horses.

We have been able to do our mustard work because we were backed by the National Dairy Development Board and the Department of Biotechnology. This, in spite of being based in a liberal university. That shows you the possibilities. When people say that GM seeds could breed monopolies, what is your response? Fight them or keep your farmers stuck to low-yielding varieties and have them importing [oil]. Either way, your money is going to go… What greater crisis do you want in our agriculture? Yields are stagnant, climate change will give you more insect attacks, and we are importing crores worth of edible oil. How will you go about doubling farmers’ income? And all we talk about is GM, GM, GM.

Why do you think transgenic technology evokes such apprehension?

There is certainly a fear. We understand technology as long as it deals with objects of pleasure such as cellphones and cars. We understand health tech but don’t always understand the extent of scientific work underlying it. However, the knowledge of how the world feeds itself is, somehow, extremely limited. Else these paranoid questions wouldn’t be asked. Just as people have health problems, crops have diseases and manipulating genes is necessary to address them.

You say that your BB system is a platform technology and not, on its own, responsible for increasing yields. How do you explain that to farmers?

These mustard plants we have made will spread in no time. Farmers don’t care about underlying technology, and historically it’s seen that hybrids have always done well. I don’t see this as being any different. However, it will do best in ecologies where it has been tested. There may be differences in output in Rajasthan and Bihar. There is no question of blindly promoting DMH-11 all over the country. Right now we hope to release it in parts of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan. We are sure it will do very well in these climates.

Wouldn’t farmers in the east, in Bihar and Jharkhand, hear about DMH-11 and want it for their farms?

They would need different hybrids. Varieties are suited for different climates and disseminating proper information about these aspects is where management comes into play. That is where agricultural extension and honesty is required. With dishonesty, anything will crash. The only thing with science and technology is you can’t b******* for too long and you will be found out.

Source: The Hindu, 7-06-2017

Second green revolution

The first green revolution, helmed by visionary scientists like Norman Borlaug and M.S. Swaminathan, born of a near-death food crisis, turned around Indian agriculture through an increase in farming land, development and use of grains hardened against pests, use of fertilizers and pesticides, multiple cropping, higher farmer credit and better irrigation techniques.
While it rescued India from starvation in the 1960s, there are dark clouds over Indian agriculture again. Over the years, our gross domestic product (GDP) has grown by 7.5% annually, but agricultural growth has severely lagged at 3%. In another 30 years’ time, India will have 1.5 billion people, with growing incomes, and the demand for foodgrain is expected to almost double to 450 million tonnes. Moreover, our farmers are dying; 8,000 of them committed suicide last year, that is 22 farmers every single day. Moreover, in the first four months of 2016, 100 farmers committed suicide every month in Marathwada alone.
Why is this happening?
Our farmers do not earn enough to feed themselves and repay their debts. Calculations show that the average farmer household in India makes Rs6,426 a month, and needs to have at least 1 hectare of land to make ends meet. However, 65% of farmers have less than one hectare, and so must take debt to make ends meet. More than 50% of farmers are indebted, and the average outstanding loan of a farmer is Rs47,000, usually at a usurious interest rate.
Our current farming practices are not going to solve it. To feed our population, we need to double agricultural yield, store and transport it better, and enable it with the right insurance and credit. And to make this next quantum jump happen, what we need is a second green revolution—one not based on land, chemicals, or water but on data, digital technologies and drones. Agriculture technology, or AgTech, will fuel the digital transformation of this most ancient of all industries.
I believe the second green revolution will be based on five transformative digital agritechnologies:
Technology-enabled advisory:
Information is power; for the farmer, it is gold, and can mean the difference between a bountiful harvest and a disastrous crop. When to harvest, where to sell the produce, how much to sell it for, what to sow next, which inputs (seeds, fertilisers, etc.) are needed, where to get them at the best price, when is it likely to rain, when will the water come—for all these questions, answers traditionally have come from a farmer’s experience, or the neighbouring farmer’s, and sometimes, an extension worker provided by the government, or a private service like Mahindra Shubhlabh.
However, the new advisor for the farmer will be his mobile phone. Imagine a techenabled advisory app on the phone, with image-recognition, speech-enablement, vernacular languages, and powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, and cloud databases. Think of a farmer who sees a diseased leaf, clicks its picture and sends it to a cloud, where the image is analysed and the details of the leaf disease sent back to the farmer, with suggested remedies, places to procure these services, and possible government subsidies available for the same. An advisory service which can answer a farmer’s questions on the go will be the single most powerful tool to drive up yields and productivity.
Precision farming:
This is a data-driven approach to raise farm yields by using GIS (geographical information system) data, soil information, and weather and environmental conditions for a specific small piece of land, by optimising the choice of crop, the use of pesticides, water and fertilisers, and the decision as to when and how to spray, till, and harvest the crop.
The precise nature of this technology is especially useful for India’s very small farm holdings; 65% of land holdings are less than 2 hectares (the average in the US is 180 hectares.) It is estimated that precision farming has been responsible for more than 80% of total increase in yields of wheat, rice and maize over the last 50 years.
In fact, a large pilot in India, the Tamil Nadu Precision Farming Project, raised crop yields by 60-80% for 23 different kinds of crops. Precision farming works with the use of GPS (Global Positioning System) and GIS (global information system) data, cheap IoT (Internet of Things) sensors in the soil which track moisture, Nitrogen levels, etc. and feeds the data back to an analytics engine in the cloud, which then recommends the right timing and techniques of inputs.
Real-time market information:
The Indian farmer sells most of his produce to a middleman for price lower than he can get, because he does not have the right, current market information.

He cannot make the right decision on what to plant, since he does not know the patterns and forecasting of price.
Mobile phones and cheap data plans can change all that. The e-Choupal network of ITC, for instance, has created more than 6000 e-Choupals and networked four million farmers, who exchange information with each other. A query-able content repository in the cloud can make real-time market information and analytics available to individual farmers.
Tech-enabled supply chain:
The farm supply chain in India is broken; we can store only 10% of the fresh produce we grow—30% of it rots. Building more warehouses and cold chains will certainly help; however, technologies like IoT, bar coding and blockchain can help monitor the produce from farm to market and cut down the extent of spoilage and loss.
Tech-enabled insurance:
While crop insurance exists, an overwhelming majority of crops are not insured, leaving the farmer severely indebted when his crop fails.
Technology and information, from sources like IBM’s Weather Company and Skymet, can be used to predict weather patterns and therefore derive more precise premiums and insurance covers for small farmers. Smart contracts on blockchain-based technologies can be used for automatic pay-outs, discouraging on-ground field assessment.
There are a bunch of startups and large companies operating in the AgTech area. Before Monsanto bought an AgTech company called Climate Corp. for close to $1 billion, no one paid much attention to this part of the digital wave.
Climate Corp, set up by two ex-Googlers, is a digital agriculture company that examines weather, soil and field data to help farmers determine potential yield-limiting factors in their farms, and then suggests ways to ameliorate them. In India, too, scores of AgTech startups are coming up.
Agrostar and Bighaat enable e-commerce and doorstep delivery of seeds, chemicals and accessories; Ninjacart, FarmerUncle and MeraKisan enable e-commerce of produce for a direct farmer-todoorstep delivery. Cropin and Airwood are making the ‘enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management of agriculture’; Stellapps makes dairy management tools integrated with IoT, cloud, mobility and analytics; Flybird is in precision farming while Trringo, from the Mahindra Group, is building an ‘Uber for tractors and farm machinery’. AgTech specific funds and accelerators like Omnivore Partners, Villgro and Village Capital are coming up, reflecting the bullishness in the sector. The government, too, has stepped into the act with the Prime Minister launching eNAM (electronic National Agricultural Market), which aims to link 200 wholesale markets or mandis to achieve the ambitious goal of doubling farmers’ income by 2022.
Data is the new soil
For these tech companies, data is the new soil—to be mined and analysed. There is a new mathematics of farming— what was measured in acres is now measured in square foot, enabling more micro-farming and precision agriculture. Agriculture is being platformized, with platform models being applied to create market places and on-demand models for machinery, inputs and produce.
As the digital revolution rolls across India, agriculture is its last, and most important, frontier. Today, we are seeing perhaps the dawn of the second green revolution. While there is a long way to go, the true success of Digital India will be if it helps 70% of our population—agricultural workers and farmers.
The archetypal impression of the Indian farmer has been a wizened, gnarled man sitting in his parched field, shading his eyes from the merciless sun and gazing at the clouds, willing them to rain. Perhaps, soon, that will change to him expectantly looking at the data cloud through his mobile phone, waiting for it to spew out the information and knowledge, to add to his wisdom. That is when we will know that the Second Green Revolution has arrived.
Jaspreet Bindra is senior vice- president of digital transformation at Mahindra Group. Views are personal.

Source: Mint epaper, 23/01/17

Don’t call me a goddess, I am a farmer

A Dalit women farmers’ collective demonstrates the power of Rs10 in empowering the community and achieving food security for their families.

My name is Seema Mahila Kisan Samiti,” she said.

“Seema Mahila Kisan Samiti?” I repeated after her.

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Seema Devi,” I addressed her.

“Not Devi. Why Devi? Devi is that goddess we worship under the tree over there. I am no goddess, I am a kisan, a farmer.”

Seema, the farmer, is a member of the Saraswati Mahila Kisan Samiti, a women farmers’ collective in Sahar tehsil, district Bhojpur, Bihar. She is also the elected ward member from her community, the first woman from the Mahadalit caste to hold this position in their area.

“We have always been farmers,” Krishna Devi explains to me. We are standing in a group in the shade of a tree on the edge of rice fields. All around us is lush green standing crop. The only work the rice fields demand at this time is weeding.

Seema, Krishna Devi, Ganga Devi and Dukhni Devi are women who have emerged as leaders within the Dalit and Mahadalit community of Vishnupura village in Sahar tehsil, ever since landless women here formed a self-help collective to lease land and grow their own crops.

Seema Mahila Kisan, an elected ward member and farmer from the Mahadalit community demonstrates how she has learnt to sign on documents.

Today I am witness to a strategy and forward planning meeting in this open-air conference room. There is talk about seeds, fertilizers, soft loans and farmer welfare schemes that must be accessed. What they would like to do better in terms of soil preparation before they sow the next crop. There is exchange of information about cultivation of pulses in smaller plots and vegetables in their own kitchen gardens.

Some women have infants balanced on their hips. Toddlers are playing in the mud nearby. Older children are jumping into the irrigation canal repeatedly, squealing with delight. Childcare at the workplace is an accepted norm here.

“It is just that only men have been considered to be farmers, because they own land,” Krishna Devi tells me. “We have always worked in the fields, but we have never had access to money and resources. All through my life, I have cooked for everyone at home and gone to the fields. Women have always been in charge of seeding, sowing, transplantation, weeding, harvesting and storing the grain.”

“Now we do our own farming on our own land,” adds Ganga Devi. We get money in our own hands and we are able to save some of it. We can decide how to spend it.”

“Our families eat better now,” says Dukhni Devi, her voice tearing up. “When my children were small, they slept hungry. We were crushed under loans. Today I grow so many vegetables, I have to sell some of them in the market.”

Seema Mahila Kisan has a dramatic flair for storytelling. She narrates the story of the transformation in their lives using Rs10 to illustrate her point. The Rs10 that she didn’t have when she worked as farm labour in the fields of upper-caste men in the village.

“We got together and contributed Rs10 each every month. Slowly we collected enough money to lease a small plot of land. Why shouldn’t we work for our own selves?” she asks rhetorically. “The next year we leased a bigger plot. Slowly we began to grow potatoes and dal as well.”

Seema holds up her wrist and shows me two dozen green glass bangles on her wrist. “Today I have Rs10 to buy bangles for myself. You think I could afford this earlier? I didn’t even have the guts to sit on a dhurrie with people like you. I would have peeped from my window and hidden till you had left.”

This women farmers’ collective near the town of Ara is one of many such groups in Bihar that have been created through the efforts of the Pragati Grameen Vikas Sansthan (PGVS), a Patna-based organization that works for the land rights of underprivileged communities. Some of the most successful stories of women farmers’ collectives are to be found in Kerala, Punjab, Assam and the North-Eastern states.

“It is a reasonable estimate that 65-75% of the work involved in growing crops is done by women in India,” says Prem Kumar Anand, who is programme officer, economic justice, at Oxfam India. “What has been historically denied to women is ownership of land and the stature of a farmer. Less than 10% of women own land.”

Sindhu Sinha is a much beloved Didi (older sister) among the women of Vishnupura. She is the regional coordinator for PGVS and visits the community regularly to help with the logistics of running a collective. “When we first came to this village, no girl here was educated. None of them went to school. That is where we started from. Today five-six girls from this village have completed their matric studies.”

“I used to put my thumbprint on all official documents earlier. Since I became a ward member, I have started putting my signature,” says Seema Mahila Kisan, making a gesture of signing with her right hand on her left palm. “Today we know how to claim our Indira Awaas fund, disability allowance, widow pension and old age pensions. We receive fertilizers and seeds for wheat, onion and dalalso. It was hard to make people at the district headquarters take us seriously as farmers. But now they do.”

In the social and economic structure of the village, a person’s status, honour and identity is linked intrinsically to land ownership. Claiming land rights is also critical towards sustaining livelihood and food security for families of the poor.

“When a woman owns a piece of land, however small it may be, it raises her social status. This has influenced the government too. The land that is being distributed to the landless now includes the woman’s name in the legal deed. This is a big success for us,” says Sindhu Sinha.

Seema Mahila Kisan is a mother of four. She sends two daughters to school regularly. She is pleased with the uniforms the children have received from school. The midday meal is an added bonus.

“Where all have you travelled?” I ask her.

“I have travelled a lot now,” she tells me. “I have seen many other worlds that I had not seen earlier. Earlier, when I left home, I would go to Barahi bazaar or Sahar. Now I have seen Ara, Delhi, Gwalior, Ranchi, Bodh Gaya.” She turns around her to see who all have surrounded us to hear her words. Her laughter rings with happiness.

Natasha Badhwar is a film-maker, media trainer and mother of three. She tweets at @natashabadhwar and posts on Instagram as natashabadhwar.

Cheap data can usher in green revolution 2.0

Vishwa Mohan

New Delhi:





Govt Programmes Aiding Farm Output Will Help Only If Farmers Can Access Such Info On Mobiles

Prospects of cheap internet data might have taken political overtones with politicians getting into the `atta' (wheat flour) verses `data' debate, but availability of cheap and fast data has the potential to increase farm productivity and farmers' incomes.India's space agency Isro's ongoing programme of predicting site suitability for a particular crop, cropping intensity , early-season crop forecasting, soil texture, moisture as well as agricultural water management will show desired results only when farmers can access these information on their smart phones.
“The country's space ag ency can even assess if a particular crop can be planted in a particular site. But dissemination of such information to each and every farmer in the country remains a big challenge. The government's initiatives through Digital India programme will help, provided farmers can afford internet data on their mobile phones and access those vital inputs,“ said an official involved in the programme.
Though a lot of such information is being shared through various `krishi vigyan kendras' (agriculture science centres) across the country, farmers still don't get fast and accurate farm and cropspecific solutions to their problems on the ground.
Availability of affordable data will help them get such information at a time when the world is fast moving towards `digital farming' whe re data-driven insights are helping farmers improve their on-farm decision-making.The days are not far when they can send farm pictures, including of weeds and infected portion of crop fields, to scientists and get quick solutions on their phones.
Crop science division of global crop protection and seed giant Bayer AG has started testing its digital tool in India.The idea behind `digital farming' is to help farmers identify pests, diseases and weeds down to the square metre of their farms and provide them with solutions to enhance yield and farm profitability .
The company last week demonstrated its `digital farming' tool during the `Future of Farming Dialogue 2016' in Leverkusen, Germany . Responding to TOI's question on how such tools would work in India where a majority of farmers have small landholdings, head of Bayer's crop science division Liam Condon said a lot of testing was going on to find out the rights solution for them. Condon said the testing was being done in India to find out how mobile-phone technology could combine with the outreach programme and how it could be used in smart and simple ways to help the company solve problems of farmers.
During the Farming Dialogue, experts explained that digitalisation could give farmers timely field-level information for selecting right inputs, including fertiliser or crop protection dose, determining the ideal time for crop protection steps and recognising plant stress factors at an early stage.

Source: Times of India, 12-09-2016

The pulse of India’s agrarian economy

Pulses use less water per unit crop and also address hidden hunger

The severe drought across India should hopefully help focus attention on the overuse of water in agriculture. A data analysis by Roshan Kishore in this newspaper last week (http://goo.gl/P3lCLK) showed that the average water footprint for five major crops— rice, wheat, maize, sugarcane and cotton—is far higher than global averages.

At the root of the problem is a policy framework that is dominated by concerns about food security rather than water usage. The dominant role given to water-intensive cereals is a hangover from the harsh lessons of the 1960s, when a shortage of rice and wheat not only forced millions to go to bed hungry but also compromised India’s strategic autonomy, thanks to the dependence on US emergency imports under the PL 480 programme.

It is time India switched its policy focus to the efficiency of water use rather than adding to the food mountain. One key element of this switch should be greater incentives for the cultivation of pulses as well as millets—not just because they use less water for every unit of output but also as a weapon in the fight against hidden hunger. It is in this context that recent policy moves by Maharashtra deserve more attention.

The Devendra Fadnavis government has taken a few baby steps to help farmers move away from crops that use water intensively. It will make it more attractive for farmers to grow pulses by offering to pay a guaranteed price that is 5-10% higher than the central minimum support prices (MSPs) for pulses, as well as provide free seeds and fertilizers to farmers who grow pulses. This is a welcome beginning in a state that is dominated by the sugar lobby, and an experiment that other state governments should keep a keen eye on.

Domestic demand for pulses has anyway shot up in tandem with growing incomes. It is no secret that the rising prices of these pulses are not only a big contributor to high food inflation but also a political hot potato. Farmers in countries as distant as Canada have begun to grow pulses to feed growing demand in India.

India has to focus on increasing the area under pulses as well as its productivity. It also needs a more transparent system of price discovery through unified agricultural markets and revival of systems such as forward and futures markets with adequate risk management provisions.

The MSPs for pulses have often been lower than wholesale prices. Procurement levels are often low or nil. The central government had revised support prices of certain pulse groups last year as an incentive to farmers, but the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices’ report on kharif crops submitted last week has said that a more substantial hike in MSPs of pulses will be needed to reduce shortages and keep inflation under control. In addition, to minimize the wedge between domestic prices and zero-tariff import prices, the government should also consider doing away with export duties on pulses. This will prompt farmers to produce more for both the domestic and foreign markets.

This year, the centre has issued an early directive to the states—to project pulses demand and keep hoarding in check. A caveat is in order here. Imposing unrealistic limits on stocking will aggravate hoarding instead of curbing it, severely disincentivizing storage firms from storing pulses in the first place. The move by Maharashtra to impose price controls on pulses will also lead to more hoarding.

To prevent another fullfledged pulse crisis, a sum of

` 500 crore was allotted to pulses under the National Food Security Act, and a Price Stabilisation Fund with a corpus of ` 900 crore was made in this year’s budget exclusively for pulses. Three agencies—Food Corporation of India, Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd—purchased more than 50,000 tonnes of pulses from farmers as buffer stocks during the fiscal year.

The centre and states would also do well to simultaneously focus on insuring farmers, raising yields within water constraints, enhancing food processing and storage facilities and abandoning export controls. A shift in the highly skewed cropping pattern of the country is the need of the hour.

Will the higher MSPs incentivize farmers to cultivate more pulses? Tell us at views@livemint.com

Source: Mintepaper, 5-05-2016