Strategising success
The fruit and vegetable sector has yet to realise its full
potential with farmers often facing a glut situation. Dr Ram
Aneja suggests a remedy - to follow the dairy example
Indian vision for 2020 expects agriculture's
contribution to the GDP to come down
from the current 25 per cent to six per
cent, even after considering modest growth in
the agriculture sector. This will only widen the
existing gap between the haves and have-nots.
What is likely to happen to over 50 per cent
of the population that is currently dependent
on agriculture?
One of the major resources that we have
in India is the skill that our farmers have in
optimising their returns to agriculture. These
have already been amply demonstrated by the
fact that the value of the output of milk in the
country exceeds the value of wheat and rice
put together. Also, most of the milk is
produced through the conversion of
agriculture by-products with very limited land,
which is actually being used for the
production of fodder. The deployment of these
skills will further call for labour intensive
agriculture. Fruit and vegetable production is
labour intensive, as every plant and its
products need to be looked after and greater
human intervention is needed at the time of
harvest, to ensure right size, maturity, colour,
ripeness and so on.
The yields of the fruits and vegetables are,
in most cases, 4-5 times the yields of cereals
and the water requirements of the crops are
usually no more than cereals. This will not
only yield more crop per drop, but also has the
potential of producing more paisa per drop.
This is important, as water is increasingly
becoming a major limitation to Indian
farming. Also, these crops need 5-10 times
more labour per acre. That may turn out to be
the critical f actor that can make India a
major player in the sector. With the sun being
on our side, India can become a major
exporter of fruits and vegetables.
What has prevented India in achieving
this goal? When India was advised by the
World Bank and the FAO not to produce milk
in the country as it was cheaper to import
milk powder from the developing countries, it
was the nascent National Dairy Development
Board at Anand, which looked at the natural
advantages that India had in sunshine and
crop residue based labour intensive milk
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