Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Knowledge can keep the wolf from the door

A.A.Michael Raj

Education will protect farmers while dealing with landlords and grain dealers, says Swaminathan

COIMBATORE: : India will prosper and be free from hunger if every village becomes a knowledge centre and farmers follow the suggestions of experts to grow more food grains and vegetables in a scientific manner.

"Agriculture is knowledge-intensive, not chemical-intensive. Knowledge connectivity must be the backbone in the villages," said the chairman, National Commission on Farmers, M. S. Swaminathan. At a centenary seminar on agricultural research, organised at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Prof. Swaminathan explained his action plan to grow enough for the needs of every Indian and stock up on food to tide over hard times.

Food security

For local food security, farmers should diversify to other crops besides the staple ones they traditionally cultivated. Community food banks could store surplus food until needed. A community seed bank, grain bank and field gene bank were also good ideas to widen the range of food crops cultivated in a particular region.

Building soil health was another way to enhance crop productivity. Soil analysis would give a detailed picture of the micronutrient status. This would help small farmers enhance productivity on their land, leading to marketable surplus food. They would be able to eat more and sell more. Breeding livestock would give farmers an alternative livelihood. In drought-prone Rajasthan, animal husbandry, acacia cultivation and weaving resulted in multiple livelihood ability that did much to prevent farmers committing suicides when their crops failed. The priority should be to step up "on farm, off farm and non-farm" activities.

Self-help groups

Self-help groups should shift from dependence on micro finance to livelihood finance, so that they would be able to sustain themselves. They needed a stream of timely information on market, management, technology and credit.

Community radio and the Internet could provide reliable weather reports for fishermen who wanted to venture into the sea for the day's catch.Prof. Swaminathan, who is also the president, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, said that it was important to step up the "lab to land" and "land to lab" activities.

In India, the productivity per hectare was low and there were techniques to remedy the situation.

"Productivity has to do with yield per hectare, not land expansion. What we need is productivity in perpetuity without ecological harm. We need an evergreen revolution and farmer participatory research in land-hungry but population-rich countries," he said.

Survey

A survey had revealed that 45 per cent of farmers were ready to quit the profession if given the option to do so. This was undesirable in a country where 75 per cent of the population depended on farming and there was a need to increase food production from 220 to 440 million tonnes a year and rectify nutritional deficiencies.

Between 1870 and 1900, when agriculture had stagnated in the country and famine had loomed large, several commissions appointed by the British rulers had highlighted the need for education and research."Agriculture is the greatest living industry in India. It is the largest private sector industry. The land is individually owned, not socially owned. Education will protect them in their transactions with the landlords to whom they pay rent and the grain dealers to whom they sell their crops," Prof. Swaminathan said.

School's role

Rural schools should help children become knowledgeable cultivators, observers, thinkers and experimenters. During the past 100 years, TNAU had achieved "unparalleled performance", both in education and research. "All great agricultural scientists are from Coimbatore and students here can be proud of their great heritage," he added.

The Royal Commission on Agriculture had said that the basis of all agricultural progress was experiment. Since 1942-43, there had been no famine in India, but there still existed "under nourishment arising from poverty." Hunger could be classified as "chronic, hidden or transient", while food security depended on "availability, access and absorption".

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