Surinder Sud: A new farm mission

FARM VIEW

The food security Mission has to raise rice output by 10 mn tonnes, wheat by 8mn and pulses by 2mn in five years.

The newly launched National Food Security Mission, which has become operational from the current rabi season, has its task cut out for it. It has to raise the production of rice by 10 million tonnes, wheat by 8 million tonnes and pulses by 2 million tonnes in five years, ending 2011-12.

Prima facie, it does not seem too difficult a target. For, there exists a huge gap in the current average yields and the potential yields which can be realised with available technologies. Bridging this gap, or even narrowing it appreciably, can help achieve the goals. But, to do so, the Mission will have to grapple with the factors that have kept the output of these crops static for the past several years. This is where the real challenge lies. Also challenging is the task of boosting the productivity of pulses where even the potential yields are not too high.

The production and productivity of wheat and rice have tended to stagnate even in the agriculturally progressive areas largely because the soils have become fatigued. The intensive agriculture in vogue in these areas without adequate use of organic manures and replenishment of depleted plant nutrients, especially vital micro-nutrients, has led to the deterioration of soil health, impairing its fertility. Any improvement in the yields, therefore, requires rather high doses of costly inputs which the farmers, denied remunerative returns on their produce, find difficult to afford.

Besides, the funds-starved farmers have not been replacing the old seeds produced by themselves on their farms, with fresh ones of better varieties. Worse still, the agriculture extension machinery responsible for know-how and technology transfer has remained paralysed in most states for a long time. As a result, even simple things like timely seed planting, absolutely critical for a crop like wheat, have not been communicated to the farmers effectively.

The new Mission, therefore, will have to address all these issues to be able to get over yield stagnation. What also needs to be borne in mind is that the course adopted at the time of the green revolution of the late 1960s "" that of concentrating efforts and resources in the areas that possessed potential for showing quick results "" is not available to the Mission. It has, therefore, necessarily to work in those areas which have so far remained laggards in agricultural production and, thus, it has scope for productivity improvement.

The Mission has, from that viewpoint, done well in taking up largely those districts in the selected 16 states where the crop productivity is lower than the state or the national average. It also seems to have taken care of some other areas of concern by including in its work plan aspects like integrated nutrient and pest management, timely inputs supply and promotion of new technologies.

Significantly, the mission has done a good deal of spadework prior to the beginning of the rabi sowing. According to the information made available to the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to the agriculture ministry, about 40 per cent of the approved plan outlay of Rs 402.27 crore for 2007-08 has already been disbursed to the selected state agencies as the first instalment to enable them to undertake the proposed interventions in the current rabi season itself. Besides, over five lakh mini-kits containing new seeds of wheat have been dispatched to different wheat growing states for distribution to farmers free to popularise improved crop varieties.

On the whole, the Mission plans to operate in 305 districts of 16 states with a total 11th Plan outlay of Rs 4882.5 crore. Of these, 133 districts in 12 states have been selected for enhancing rice yields, 138 districts in nine states for wheat and 168 districts in 14 states for pulses. The participating states include Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.

What sets this Mission apart from many of the other existing technology missions is that it proposes to function through designated state agencies and dispenses with the usual treasury route for the transfer of funds, opting, instead, for direct fund transfer. Besides, it has evolved a three-tier coordination structure for facilitating convergence of interventions from various departments and schemes concerning rural development, fertilisers, water resources and panachayati raj bodies.

However, while all this seems noteworthy, the success would ultimately depend on how well the work plan is actually carried out by the implementing agencies.

surinder.sud@bsmail.in