Gandhiji would often say that real India lives in villages. India is an agricultural country because agriculture is the mainstay of our economy. And, our agriculture depends on monsoon rains as these are the life line of our agriculture. We Indians are not afraid of anything natural more than the failure of rains. And if we have adequate rains in summer, we are happy with a bumper crop. This is the phenomenon of our agrarian pursuits.
Addressing the 54th convocation of Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI), the President said that despite the advancements made so far, Indian agriculture is yet to completely get out of the clutches of weather. It is true that man has no control over the natural phenomenon especially when it turns adverse. For two consecutive years, our country has been facing severe climatic conditions like floods, draught and failure of rain. The Agriculture Research Institute has to shoulder the responsibility of making good use of scientific techniques of farming and look for technological solutions by leveraging opportunities from frontier science like biotechnology and nano-technology. Country’s food grain production fell to 253 million tonnes in 2014-15 crop year (July-June) from a record 265 million tonnes in 2013-14 on account of 12 per cent deficit in rainfall. This is a disturbing factor. How are we to meet this challenge? The President is of the view that global climate change could aggravate these problems. There is the need that IARI must leverage opportunities from frontier sciences such as biotechnology, synthetic biology, nano-technology, computational biology, sensor technology and geo-spatial technology to develop climate- resilient technological solutions. These are great ideas and our country is capable of adopting changes which science and technology offer. There is vast scope of bringing about a revolution of sorts in our agricultural system. We need to learn from developed countries also how best scientific and technological knowledge can be put to use in our country and the state.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel