The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Call for involving youth in farm transformation movement

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Sunday, Feb 20, 2011
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Call for involving youth in farm transformation movement

Special Correspondent

Photo: R. Ragu

NEW IDEAS:M.S. Swaminathan, Chairman, MSSRF, receiving a brochure from Ajay Maken, Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports, at a function at MSSRF, Taramani, on Saturday. Dennis P. Garrity (centre), Director-General, World Agroforestry Centre, is in the picture. —

Chennai: Converting demographic dividend into an asset towards hunger and poverty alleviation and elimination calls for involving the youth in agriculture transformation movement, said Ajay Maken, Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports on Saturday.

Inaugurating an inter-disciplinary dialogue on ‘Reaping the demographic dividend in agriculture and rural development,' at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Mr. Maken said Indian society would remain relatively youthful facilitating higher levels of national savings and investment, and thus economic growth.

India's engines of economic growth were mainly from urban centres but its demographics meant that the country's future workers would increasingly come from high-fertility rural areas which revealed a fundamental mismatch. While growth required well educated and skilled workforce, a third of working-age population had no education at all and in 20 years from now a sixth of the work force would be totally unschooled, he pointed out.

Within the total capacity to train 4.3 million workers to be imparted employable and bankable skills, the worrying part was that the agriculture and rural development ministries accounted only for 0.2 million each per year, Mr. Maken said, stressing that over-emphasis on urban areas was another myopic strategy.

In his presidential address, Prof. M.S. Swaminathan said that 2011 could be a year of great challenges on the food front with FAO and World Bank cautioning of a food crisis. As South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa constituted the largest chunk of hungry people, price rise of food products could increase malnutrition and under-nutrition levels.

The National Food Security Act in the pipeline would not only provide economic access to food but would be the most important trigger for agricultural growth, he said.

Dennis P. Garrity, Director General, World Agroforestry Centre, said evergreen agriculture was emerging as an affordable and accessible science-based solution to caring better for the land and increasing smallholder food production. A South Asian Network on Evergreen Agriculture was launched at the function.

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