Food production at the end of the 11th Plan will exceed 250 million tonnes, an all time record. Our pulse production, at 18 million tonnes, is well about the previous barrier of 15 million tonnes.

Flagship programme Bharat Nirman has focussed on increasing investment in rural roads, rural electrification, irrigation, rural housing and rural communications. Over the past seven years we have engineered a shift in the terms of trade in favour of agriculture by raising significantly support and procurement prices. We financed a massive debt write off for indebted farmers of our country. We launched the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme which is both a safety net for the poor and also a powerful instrument for undertaking works that will enhance land productivity. We launched the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana and the Rainfed Areas Development Programme.

These policies have begun to pay off. We have reached new plateaus in foodgrain production. Food production at the end of the 11th Plan will exceed 250 million tonnes, an all time record. Our pulse production, at 18 million tonnes, is well about the previous barrier of 15 million tonnes. We are producing today more milk, more fruits, more vegetables, more sugarcane, more oilseeds and more cotton than ever before. Last year production of vegetables went up by 9.57% and nearly 2 million tonnes of cold storage capacity was created.


It now looks as if agricultural growth is likely to be about 3.5% per annum during the 11th Five Year Plan which is much better than in the 10th Five Year Plan. This is a commendable achievement but we must improve upon it in the Twelfth Plan to reach 4 percent growth or even higher. This will call for very determined effort on the part of both the central government and the state governments ranging over many areas including investment in irrigation, investment in watershed management, provision of credit, provision of marketing support etc. One of the key elements in that effort must be the contribution of agricultural research and I would like to use this opportunity to focus on this area.

A gap between the yield per hectare that is observed in the field and the yields that can be achieved under ideal farming conditions. That difference is quite substantial at present and it represents the failure of the system to exploit the yield potential which our scientists have given us. In the short run it is the job of the administration to close this gap and our agricultural strategy must give high priority to this effort. This is not the job of research scientists but it does involve close collaboration between our scientific and technical manpower and the administration on the ground. We must do better in this area than we have done thus far.


The Krishi Vigyan Kendras which now cover virtually the entirelength and breadth of the country and Agricultural Technology Management Agencies (ATMA) have to play a major role in this process of revitalization and transformation of extension network.

The National Agricultural Research System needs to be further strengthened to meet the challenges of the years ahead. One requirement of this is the adequacy of financial resources. Our Government is committed to raising R&D spending as a whole to at least 2% of the GDP by the end of the XII Plan from the current level of about 1%. Given the importance that agriculture has in achieving our national goals, we have to ensure that a significant proportion of increased R&D spending is directed to agriculture and related activities.

the public sector needs to take the lead we also need much greater private sector investment and involvement in agriculture, particularly in R&D. Indeed, it is unlikely that the goal of 2% of GDP in research can be achieved unless a significant part of this is financed by the private sector. Further, greater integration of the agricultural, industrial and Science and Technology sectors of our economy alone can yield large productivity gains based on new innovations and technologies.
Special attention needs to be paid to the role of women in the farm sector. Women have historically been the source of much traditional knowledge. Thus special efforts have to be made to make the entire R&D chain more gender sensitive and give priority to technological options that reduce the drudgery of women working on the farm.

It is estimated that we would need an addition of nearly 50 million tonnes of food grains in the next 10 years to meet domestic demand. Increased production of foodgrains is certainly an important plank of food security and our efforts to rid the country of the scourge of malnutrition.

But proper nutrition also requires a balanced diet. We would need to produce more fruits & vegetables and protein rich products such as milk, eggs, fish and meat. The demand for these products is expected to grow substantially with rising incomes and changing dietary habits and preferences. Therefore we have to pursue a multi-pronged strategy which seeks to boost productivity and production through product-specific interventions.