The Hindu : Centre urges States to identify livelihood crops

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 28, 2003

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Centre urges States to identify livelihood crops

By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi Dec. 27. The Centre today urged the State Governments to urgently identify crops that were critical to food and livelihood security so that suitable measures could be taken in terms of appropriate bound rates of tariff and other non-tariff measures at the World Trade Organisation negotiations.

The Government was doing its best to protect the interests of the country's farmers during the on-going negotiations, the Union Secretary for Agriculture, R.C.A. Jain, said here on Friday at the National Horticulture Conference.

Calling upon the Plant Protection Organisations to gear themselves up for surveillance, certification and inspection for export of horticultural crops to the countries with stringent requirements, he said farmers must also be sensitised to maintain high quality standards at competitive cost to avail the market access opportunities abroad.

"Application of stringent sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures by the developed countries on exports from India was an issue in the context of export efforts. Judicious use of pesticides and chemicals also assumes greater significance in the context of food safety issues. Health hazards due to pesticide residues become more acute with the use of pesticides in horticultural crops which are largely consumed. Fresh and stringent standards must be maintained on that count,'' he said.

Asserting that horticulture had emerged as the most viable option for diversification of agriculture, Mr. Jain said the Centre had initiated a scheme on Sustainable Development of Horticulture through technological interventions for promotion of Indian horticulture internationally. The scheme would address issues such as development of horticulture in island eco-systems, high-tech horticulture and precision farming, including technology dissemination and application on the farmer's field.

He said the sector was in the transition phase yet and development of technologies from production of planting material to value addition of produce needed to be accelerated. The task of doubling horticulture production was a huge challenge requiring efforts through a National Mission on Horticulture, he said.

The Agriculture Secretary said that despite efforts being made by the National Horticulture Board to collate and document the information on area, production, productivity, arrival and prices of horticultural produce, the database was "weak." Despite requests to the State Governments to furnish information about the situation regarding sensitive horticultural crops on a weekly basis, it was not being done to the desired extent. The availability of timely data was crucial for facilitating decisions having a direct bearing on the farming community, he said.

The Centre was in the process of launching an exclusive television and radio channel on the farm sector for dissemination of knowledge and kisan call centres for easy access to information on agriculture.

The Horticulture Commissioner, H.P. Singh, listed the hurdles in achieving the targeted horticultural production of 300 million tonnes by the end of the 11th Plan; the productivity of several horticultural crops was low and post-harvest losses continued to be high; and quality of the produce needed to be improved and resource use efficiency required upgrading.

Although India ranked second in the world in the production of fruits and vegetables, their availability continued to be below in dietary requirements. Dr. Singh informed the conference that bamboo was being declared as a horticultural and plantation crop. The Agriculture Ministry is the nodal Ministry for implementation of the Bamboo Mission.

The two-day conference reviewed the progress of various horticultural programmes and discussed emerging issues to develop a road map for the envisaged horticulture-led transformation. Horticulture secretaries and directors from various States, vice-chancellors of various State agriculture universities, horticulture experts, senior officers from various Ministries and representatives of various commodity associations participated.

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