The Financial Express, 21 February 2011
Every year when the Budget is read aloud, India’s livestock sector waits on baited breath, only to be disappointed by their near-total exclusion. Sixty-four years after Independence, the ministry of agriculture continues to pretend that India is a vegetarian country, despite the fact that two-thirds of our fellow citizens eat non-vegetarian food.
This year, we deserve a Budget that improves the productivity of poultry, dairy, and aquaculture farmers.
The easiest way to start is by lowering animal feed costs: eliminating staggeringly high duties on imported feed additives or amino acids, slashing export incentives given to oil meal traders, and removing excise duty on molasses used in cattle feed. These simple steps will translate into lower prices for dairy products, eggs, poultry meat, and fish.
It is high time to tackle the most glaring hole in our nation’s food security: edible oil. India currently imports 8-9 million tonne of edible oil per year, approximately 55% of our total consumption. We make farmers and exporters in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Latin America wealthy while our consumers get squeezed.
The solution to this crisis, cultivation of oil palm, has been known for two decades but never fully supported by the Centre. The neglect is even more absurd when you consider the simple fact that oil palm can deliver 4 tonne of oil per hectare versus one tonne of oil or less from soya, rapeseed, groundnut, sunflower and other oilseeds.
India has potential for 10 lakh hectare of oil palm, but has only cultivated 1.5 lakh hectare to date. So how can we close the 8.5 lakh hectare gap over the next 10-15 years? For starters, we need to acknowledge that given the long duration of their investments, Indian oil palm farmers deserve to be insulated Promotion of micro irrigation has been one of the most successful initiatives supported by the Government to increase agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability. Given the immense challenge that water scarcity will create for Indian farmers in the coming decades, it is critical that micro irrigation ramp up from its current usage on only 3.5 million hectare, and realize its full potential of 50-70 million hectare.
The government should give the micro irrigation industry infrastructure status, which is currently only given to macro irrigation projects.
This will allow micro irrigation companies to benefit from concessional lending rates and taxation advantages, lowering the total delivered cost of micro irrigation systems, and making them more affordable for small farmers. Likewise, the Government should double the total outlay for micro irrigation subsidies, as many states are reluctant to properly fund their share of the current subsidy system. Increasing the penetration of micro irrigation is a national priority and should not be held hostage to the strained budgets of fiscally distressed states.
Finally, without putting investment in agricultural R&D onto a war footing, India will never be able to ensure its long-term food security. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research and State Agricultural Universities require a major infusion of funding, especially with faculty vacancies at agricultural universities hovering around 50%. Even more desperately, however, they must be reoriented towards technology commercialization.
Public sector extension has failed the Indian farmer and new approaches that leverage the private sector should be implemented immediately. The torch of leadership must be passed, not to large Indian companies or MNCs, but to a new generation of agricultural technology (“ag-tech”) startups and farmer-entrepreneurs.
Source: The Financial Express
