The Next Decade And New Agriculture
The landmark agricultural revolution has transformed the nation from one dependent on grain imports into a net exporter of food. Yet, India’s agricultural policies have continued to focus largely on grain self-sufficiency.
That agriculture is an enterprise has not been fully appreciated. An inter-country evaluation shows that India ranks eleventh and twelfth respectively in services and industry – and hold your breath – second in agricultural production, overtaking the USA, Russia and Brazil despite their elephantine land holdings. It is time to celebrate India’s small farms, and recognise their operational proficiency. Wisdom suggests a new methodological approach to evaluating productivity and profitability norms.
The concept of ‘yield’ will metamorphose over the coming ten years. While in the USA, economic returns come from high yield/hectare in a single season, in India it will be a function of diverse use of the farmland and the aggregate output in a year. This decade will replace ‘yield’ as a measure, by ‘total output’ defined as a sum of everything (consumables + non-consumables but processables).
At a more fundamental level, ‘monetary value’ and not ‘physiological output’ will constitute the new norm, and ‘sustainability’ the new performance indicator. This switch to “New Agriculture” will unleash a paradigm shift in research and development, science and technology, policy and programme and organisation and management.
The hypotheses in agricultural science will hover around farm diversity and research objectives basis economic value. The policy framework will hinge on markets and demand; and reforms and facilitation. Farms and their produce will get consolidated via farmers’ mobilisation (cooperatives, companies and contracts). New doors will open to service providers offering operational efficiency on the back of technology, information and knowledge.
A new awakening will pitch the condemning of ‘drudgery-based’ farm operations and pave the way for information and intelligence-based farm engagement. Professional service providers will take over routine tasks, letting today’s farmer transform himself into a manager.
The new managerial approach will enhance resource use efficiency and cost-effectiveness and free the farmer for productive on-and-off farm innovations. The idle stock of manpower, land, and farm generated resources will begin to feed secondary agriculture, and generate additional value, jobs and incomes. The trend of shifting surplus manpower since 2005-06 will strengthen, bringing benefits to service and manufacturing sectors.
Market-led geometry and product matrix will trigger nutrition yielding, job creating and income generating crop and sector diversification. The new science of energy and materials will see greater value in organics and composites, and complete the loop for greater agriculture-industry integration. With concerns over climate change, depleting fossil fuels and mineral resources, the world industry will begin to respect agriculture as a sustainable source of multiple raw materials.
In sequel, the nature and types of agricultural outputs with their yield parameters will see an overhaul. Corn, for example, will be grown not merely as food for humans and animals, but industry as well, where a potential exists for than 3,000 intermediate and final products.
The decade will also see challenges from increasing population, changed aspirations, higher purchasing power and global competition, calling for agricultural efficiency. Net cultivated area will decline to about 138 million hectares (Mha.) only to be offset by an increase in the gross cultivated area to about 250 Mha. The area under horticulture and agro-forestry could move up to around 45 Mha.
