The present steep rise in food prices can slow down our sincere effort to poverty alleviation, hinder economic growth and retard employment generation. Rising food prices and the persistent food shortage has the capacity to derail our endeavour to promote reforms and will make inflation control more difficult.
The Prime Minister was expressing his concern over the present steep rise in food prices and lowering of the food supply while addressing the Global Agro Industries Forum here, after Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) chief Jacques Diouf awarded him the “Agricola Medal” for his contribution to agricultural and social development in India. Manmohan Singh is the first Indian Prime Minster to confer this award. The award was established in1976.
Manmohan Singh pledges to take the agriculture to a new height of knowledge-based development however he did not rule out that the current steep rise in food prices has the capacity to hinder the economic growth and inflation control more difficult.
Industrialisation is essential for the economic growth but he insisted that the non-farming economy couldn’t prosper on the back of an impoverished farm sector. A growth in agricultural productivity, which means an augmentation in farm incomes as well as food production, is the need of the hour, Dr Singh said.
“Climate change and global warming may have a harmful impact on land productivity and water availability. We need concerted global action to grasp the impact of climate change on agricultural production worldwide,” he said after observing the problems facing by Indian farmers due to shortage of water supply.
Today, small and marginal farms have become an unviable proposition. Many households have been shifting their livelihood from agriculture to labour intensive work. The need is to make farming viable at this scale, by combining economics of small farms with economics of mass production and modern marketing.
Observing that the pressure of the population dependent on agriculture would be augmented in the long run, the Prime Minister emphasised the need for labour-intensive industrialisation to absorb the surplus workforce form rural areas.
The Prime Minister also praised the farmers’ hard work for ending India’s dependency on food imports. The green revolution was a remarkable achievement, which made us largely self-sufficient in food grains. Though today’s situation is quite bit different from the one, which was forty years ago, but somehow we are again at the beginning of a new phase in our agricultural growth trajectory.
Lowering in supply of food grains and other food items has made the situation worst not only in India but internationally, where rising demand for food is not being met with a similar supply side response.
He also did not neglect one of the reasons for lowering of the supply was diversification of land from food crops to bio-fuels. The transformation is apparently linked to the galloping oil prices and its rising demand and bio-fuel as an alternative to the imported hydrocarbon fuels.
Dr Singh said that viewing the present food crisis domestically as well as globally, it seems that the first Green Revolution has run its course. Now, we need a second Green Revolution in terms of new technologies, new organisational structures, and above all the new compact between scientists, administrators, bankers, and consumers.
Need of Global Support
India’s Green Revolution would not have been possible without the active cooperation and support of several international organizations as well as some major developed countries, such as the United States of America, Dr Singh said.
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