Agricultural Techniques in India and the condition of farmers, Comment.
Over a centuries, agriculture is the back bone of our nation. More than 60.00 per cent of our native people depend on agriculture to support their livelihood. In the beginning, when our ancestors started cultivation, we satisfied our need totally depending on our immediate environment by utilizing the resources available in the biosphere. Increasing population, the increased wants of human comforts, to satisfy their needs leads to over use of natural resources.
Agriculture is the primary occupation of millions of our people and the output of this primary occupation are directly utilized as raw materials for other sectors viz., secondary and tertiary. Increasing the demand of the primary sectors output as input of other sectors and the effect of green revolution paves way to use HYV (High Yielding Varieties), Chemicals like Fertilizers, Pesticides, Herbicides etc., and modern machineries increased the yield of agriculture over a period.
Continuous use of modern techniques of agricultural production has some drawbacks like over use of chemicals leads to soil and water pollution, use of heavy machines in the field results in soil compaction, deteriorate the soil structure and reduces infiltration rate leads to run off and soil erosion, HYV, drought resistant varieties of different crops leads to mono-cropping by completely eliminating diversified cropping system as a result of the green revolution. Now, we the modern people are talking GM (Genetically Modified) crops to over-come the adverse effect of pests in the field level. Genetically engineered/modified crops has capacity to minimize the effect of pest attach on different crops like Cotton, Brinjal, Corn etc. In our country Bt. Cotton is only approved GM crop for commercial cultivation. Still we have protests from the side of farmers from different part of the nation to avoid commercial cultivation of GM crops with the fear that it may affect human health or in order to shun the effect it cause on human being.
In the advanced world along with the advanced techniques of cultivation or farming practices includes the usage computers for irrigation, HYV, chemicals, GIS (Geographic Information System), GPS (Global Positioning System), e-services, market Informations, transport facilities, e-banking, call centers, free services, single window information and input services, modern machines for harvesting, processing, and packing, cold storages, value addition, Nano Fertilizers etc still our farmers condition are worsening because of high cost of various items enlisted above and small holding which is not so suitable to utilize the services provided from both Govt. and private side. The major problem faced is the extension service, in our nation we have 1:2000 (extension and farmers linkage) ration of service, with which we cannot reach all the farmers. Most of our extension systems are not farm oriented but region especially district or block or mandal or village oriented were the larger area are the main concentration and frequently failing to think that country like ours has different weather condition within the smaller distance (km). To overcome the worst situation faced by the farmers and to improve the production and productivity of the small land holdings, we should popularize the farming system based and market led extension system with participatory approach.
R. Suresh Verma
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