The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has sought a substantial hike in allocation for farm research and education in the 10th Plan. Discussions are on with the Planning Commission for this purpose.
Disclosing this, ICAR director-general Panjab Singh said a big push to agricultural research was necessary to consolidate the past gains and extend the green revolution to new areas. Massive investment was needed to improve the country's capability of exploiting frontier sciences like biotechnology, information technology, etc., for the benefit of the farmers. This was necessary also to ensure livelihood security for rural people and enhance competitiveness of Indian farm products in the global market, he added.
He pointed out that the parliamentary standing committee on agriculture had recommended allocation of one per cent of the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) for research and education. At present, only 0.3 per cent of the agricultural GDP is being spent on research.
"This investment level is too low compared to even the developing countries many of which are devoting about 0.5 per cent of their farm GDP to research and development. The investment in the developed countries is in excess of four per cent," Singh said.
Raising the level of investment to one per cent would translate into an allocation of something like Rs 25,000 crore for farm research. The present budget is only around Rs 2,500 crore. "We will be content even if this level is raised to around Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 15,000 crore to begin with," he said.
Making a strong case for higher investment, Singh said several new challenges would have to be addressed to in the 10 Plan. The rate of increase in yields had started decelerating even in the green revolution areas. This trend needed to be reversed by breaking the yield barriers through the application of state-of-the-art technology.
Besides, the existing potential for raising productivity in the areas not yet covered by the green revolution needed to be harnessed. The country's genetic resources, which had not yet been fully utilised till now, would have to be put to gainful use.
All this would need manpower well versed with new areas of science like biotechnology, integrated pest management techniques and information technology. The present agricultural research and education system would have to be revamped for this purpose. The course curricula of the agricultural universities and other teaching institutions would have to be amended to include new subjects on frontier sciences.
Singh said the emphasis would now have to shift to efficiency and quality. Without this, the Indian farm products would not be able to compete in the international market. Value-addition was another field that the ICAR would like to encourage.
Technology development effort would be reoriented to achieve these goals.
