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Tough task ahead for farm scientists: Pant

Our Bureau

NEW DELHI, June 5

THE Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Mr. K.C. Pant, has said that agricultural scientists are going to face challenges ``even more complex and difficult'' than what they have faced in the past to help feed the country's growing population.

Delivering the Fifth Foundation Day lecture of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) on Monday, he said that innovative planning, coupled with focused agricultural research and growth-oriented policies, had helped increase the country's fo odgrain production from 82 million tonnes (m.t) in 1960-61 to 203 m.t last year.

The corresponding levels of output have gone up from seven m.t to 25 m.t for oilseeds, 20 m.t to 75 m.t for milk, 110 m.t to nearly 300 m.t for sugarcane and from three m.t to 23 m.t for potato.

As a result, despite rising population, per capita grain availability had gone up from 400 gm per day in 1950-51 to 510 gm in 1997, while in the case of milk, it had similarly gone up from 125 gm to 204 gm.

``But the task ahead remains even more formidable. Our population has just crossed the one-billion mark and experts have projected that we will be overtaking China as the most populous country by 2035. To feed this growing population, an additional 5-6 m .t of foodgrains has to be produced annually.''

Mr. Pant also said that this additional output would have to be generated in a context which is less favourable than it used to be.

``The scope for expansion of cultivable area is limited in view of competing demand for land from industry and urbanisation, besides environmental considerations, which would require an increase rather than decrease in forest cover.''

To complicate matters, the past sources of agricultural growth have also been more or less saturated, with high-yielding varieties having already been spread to more than three-fourths of the country's rice area and to more than 90 per cent of the area u nder wheat.