Speech on 10th July, 2010 at Kolkata




ADDRESS OF HON’BLE MINISTER OF STATE (AGRICULTURE), PROF. K.V. THOMAS IN THE WORKSHOP ON “BRINGING GREEN REVOLUTION TO EASTERN REGION”
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Hon’ble Finance Minister Shri Pranab Mukherjee, Shri Sharad Pawar, Hon’ble Chief Ministers and State Agriculture Ministers, Vice Chancellors of the State Agriculture Universities, Senior Officers of the Central and State Governments and Ladies and Gentlemen.

It’s my privilege to be here today on the momentous occasion of launching the implementation plans of the States under the new initiative announced in the Union budget, 2010 for “BRINGING GREEN REVOLUTION TO EASTERN REGION”.

Indian agriculture has succeeded in the past in its transformation from a food deficit, import dependent country to a self sufficient and surplus one by ushering green revolution during the period between late sixties and seventies. The initiatives under Green Revolution involved the development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, and distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers. Its advent translated into a huge success for India. Starting from about 50 million tonnes of foodgrains during 1950-51, the country has achieved a significant level of more than 230 million tonnes of foodgrains production during 2008-09. Though natural calamities like drought, flood, cyclones are a recurring theme, their adverse impact is considerably mitigated with the scientific advancements in developing appropriate technologies to cope with the calamities. Development of new varieties of seeds, intensive cultivation by hard working farmers as per the package of practices prescribed by agricultural scientists and exploitation of the available resources have been the main reasons for achieving such successes.

Green Revolution achieved its success in the North Western Region among others because of the inherent advantages of the Region primarily in terms of developed irrigation system. North Western Region became the food basket of the country producing enough surplus to significantly contribute to meet the consumption requirement of the country. However, with increasing population, growing economy and stagnating productivity levels due to decline in factor use efficiency of the applied inputs, the need for developing more areas was acutely being felt. Besides, climate change especially by way of global warming is also impacting the agriculture production. In this context it has become imperative for developing all potential areas in all the Regions to meet our increasing food requirement.

Eastern Region has the potential for meeting all our requirement of food now and in future. Our scientists have developed technologies and approaches for development for different agro ecological situations to address the underlying biophysical, technological and other constraints. For example, Hybrid Rice presents one of the best and readily available technologies that can be adopted in the Eastern Indian rice growing area. It has higher yield advantage of 15-20% and can help the farmers leapfrog their productivity levels in very quick time. There are many other technologies that have been developed by our Research Centres and the Agriculture Universities that need to be taken to the farmers.

A great part of our success lies in achieving convergence between MNREGA and RKVY scheme. With these massive deployment efforts States are unlikely to suffer from funding shortages. RKVY for instance has opened an unprecedented funding and performance commitment suiting the locally specific need of the farming population.

I must also urge the ICAR to put up a concerted effort using its network of KVK’s and by reorienting their extension theme around this specific productivity enhancement option. This will lead to KOK staff supporting and capacity building district Agriculture agencies. With ATMA and other state sector extension programmes, this should spur a productivity revolution in the Eastern belt. Gradually the productivity burden must be borne by more and more states for equitable growth and offsetting the negative environmental fall outs of intensive agriculture.

The workshop is slated to formalize and initiate activities under the strategic plans prepared by the States for fetching higher productivity and production in the Eastern India. I look forward to hearing from the State Governments about these plans. I am glad that the workshop has participation from all the stakeholders – Researchers, Extension officials, Program Managers and policy makers from the States and the Central Government. I am confident that the deliberations here would help everybody in reaching out to the farmers more confidently and effectively. With the collective efforts from everybody in the service delivery chain, I am sure the farmers would be able to derive the maximum advantage from the new initiative and achieve higher and still higher levels of crop productivity.

I extend all my good wishes for the successful outcome of the new initiative.

JAI HIND