There is need for more commitment to agriculture

The Union Budget is not only a source of getting financial support for important projects, but it is also an index of the importance of different sectors of the economy. During the last few years, the importance of agriculture is getting realised largely through agitation. The rural distress is growing. The National Commission on Farmers which I chaired recommended ten years ago pro-farmer pricing, procurement and distribution strategies. Unfortunately, the recommendations have not been taken up for serious implementation. I hope the present Budget will also provide an indication of the political scenario in relation to commitment to agriculture. I wish to emphasise that if agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right. We should also move from food security to nutrition security.

Above all, we should strengthen our infrastructure for post-harvest management. Losses should be minimised and value addition should be promoted through institutional structures like the Rice BioPark established in Myanmar.

Our basic task is the conservation of diversity and pluralism in all living organisms ranging from microbes to man. In particular, we need to promote gene banks for a warming planet. In this connection, the following three kinds of community gene banks are worthy of replication.

Genetic garden of halophytes – this is to preserve gene pools for breeding crop varieties tolerant to sea water in coastal areas, as a part of anticipatory research to face the challenge of sea level rise.

Genetic garden of bio-fortified plants like moringa, sweet potato, etc. This is for helping to find agricultural remedies for prevailing nutritional maladies, in particular micronutrient deficiencies like vitamin A, vitamin B12, zinc, iron, etc. Farm gene bank for the in-situ conservation of agrobiodiversity relevant to promoting a climate smart agriculture.

The above three examples may serve to illustrate the need and opportunities for conserving agrobiodiversity for launching an era of bio-happiness. At the same time, there is a need for greater emphasis on developing sustainable water security systems.

To eliminate hunger, we should pay concurrent attention to overcoming under-nutrition caused by inadequate purchasing power, protein hunger due to insufficient intake of pulses and other protein rich foods, and hidden hunger caused by micronutrient deficiencies. In addition, we should pay attention to clean drinking water and sanitation, in order to ensure absorption of food in the body.

The Budget should make provision for establishing Nutrition Gardens of Bio-fortified Crops which will supply the needed micro nutrients like iron, iodine, zinc, vitamin A, etc. At the same time, we must launch programmes for creating a cadre of community hunger fighters in every Panchayat, who are well versed with the nutritional problems of the area and of methods of solving them. Above all, every farm should become a 'nutri-farm' combining the dimension of nutritional security with food

The writer is a geneticist and international administrator who played a leading role in the Green Revolution