Agriculture to be pillar of US-India co-operation: Clinton

Stating that India was well positioned to help it lead the fight against hunger, the US today said agriculture will be the strongest of the five pillars of co-operation the Obama administration was seeking with New Delhi.

"We will be announcing the five pillars of our cooperation (after talks tomorrow). And one of the strongest and most important will be agriculture," US secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters after a visit to the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI), where she toured the agriculture research site.

Recalling 50 years of US-Indo partnership in agriculture, Clinton said, "We have to work together because it is imperative that we invest in science that will increase crop yields."

"We have collaborated over more than 50 years and today we called to collaborate once again," she said.

Areas of collaboration she highlighted included linking farms and markets so that farmers can sell their products, expanding the export of technology and training to bring more assistance to farmers, and strengthening the response to climate change, which threatens the waterways that sustain agriculture in many parts of the world including South Asia.