The Hindu : Karnataka News : Remote sensing will help in food security: U.R. Rao

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 16, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka

Remote sensing will help in food security: U.R. Rao

Staff Reporter

BANGALORE: In spite of the green revolution, India’s agricultural productivity continues to be low at 1.7 tonnes a hectare as against the world’s average of 2.6 tonnes a hectare. Over 100 million hectares of our agricultural land has degraded owing to the bad agricultural practices. But remote sensing and access to GIS and MIS could make a world of difference to the poor farmer who has been braving it out against all odds, U.R. Rao, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said here on Tuesday.

Delivering a talk at the Remote Sensing Day celebrations of the Bangalore Chapter of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, Prof. Rao said spectacular developments in space technology, rapid advances in digitalisation and convergence of computer and communication technologies have initiated the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution.

In villages in remote Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh and in several districts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, farmers were reaping benefits of timely information and help through satellite-driven communication systems in information kiosks to increase productivity, improve the soil health and minimise fertilizer use, he said.

Prof. Rao cited several success stories of remote sensing changing the way India grows its food, even as he emphasised that the picture was still grim enough to warrant serious and urgent measures and change in policy.

He said the present level of economic growth rate of about 6 per cent a year was totally inadequate considering that almost half of it is required as demographic investment to offset the additional demand due to population growth.

India with 16 per cent of global population had less than 2 per cent global land area, around 1.5 per cent of forest, consumed just around 3 per cent of energy and accounted for only for 1.3 per cent of the global GDP.

With almost two per cent increase in population, the present stagnation in annual foodgrain production at about 210 million hectares was threatening to seriously jeopardise the food security of the nation. It was in this context, contract farming was being touted as the panacea, Prof. Rao pointed out.

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