A talk programme on "Horticulture Research and Development in India: A lesson to learn" was organized at Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD), Pokhara, Kaski on 10 July 2011. The presenter of the talk programme was Dr. H.P. Singh, Deputy Director General, Horticulture and Agriculture Extension, Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR).
During the programme, Dr. Singh presented the achievements and advancement in the horticultural research and development in India. He presented the significant contribution of Indian agriculture to feed the 18% global population from 2.3% of global land and 4.2% of global water in the face of increasing population (around 9.5 billion), water and land declining, threat of climate change, and food and nutritional insecurity. According to him, this has been achieved because of science led agricultural research and development in world and especially in India.
Still I found Dr. Singh's confidence in saying the growing population can be fed by transforming the current challenges and difficulties into opportunities, which can only be possible through science and technology. Some of the progresses, he cited from India included, crops grown at particular locations which were not grown earlier as well as their ability to feed 1130 million people and having surplus with the many fold increase in production per unit area from the same land for the last 30 years.
In his presentation, he shared some major changed challenges in agriculture sector that needs to be addressed for achieving food security such as
-Complexity of agricultural system, as compared to the simplest traditional system, created due to complexity of pests, technology, and climate change,
-Changing dietary habits of people due to growing health consciousness population,
-Increasing urbanization and transforming agricultural lands into cities,
-Youths' not attracting to traditional agriculture and their migration for non agricultural jobs,
-New tools and techniques such as biotechnology, bioinformatics, and nano technologies, and
-Focus on agricultural diversification such as horticulture, livestock, fisheries, etc.
Though India's transformation from a food deficit to a food surplus country is because of agricultural development and transformation, Dr. Singh mentioned some growing concerns for the developing and developed world and the need of joint effort on feeding growing population, managing land and water quality, responding to climate change, optimizing use of natural resources, addressing growing demand for livestock and horticultural produce, bio-fuels, and malnutrition and increasing agricultural productivity.
In such context, he highlighted on the significant role of horticultural crops to contribute to respond to the growing concerns of food security through diversification and optimum utilization, knowledge based enterprise development and technology based and farmer centric scientific innovations. With such strategies, Dr. Singh believes that horticulture can produce diet/food for daily plate, ensure balanced diet, utilize waste for fuel and fiber, reduce health risks, and manage changed dietary habits, giving an example of drumstick, if eaten can reduce protein deficiency of people.
Dr. Singh also highlighted the research and development mechanisms of India and their contribution for revolutionizing agricultural sector. More importantly, the dynamics of technologies, development initiatives and policy support were presented as the major drivers of changes in Indian agriculture. And in the face of climate change, he believed on technological advancement to respond to the impacts of climate change through more crops per drop (i.e. productive use of water), capacity building, effective utilization of resources, and facilitating accelerated adoption of improved technologies and best practices.
Learning for Nepal
Based on Dr. Singh's presentation and sharing about Nepal, there are ample opportunities for Nepal to learn from Indian advancement in agricultural research and development and specifically on horticulture. For Nepal, Agriculture is the only opportunity for Nepal, where horticulture can be a prime area of improving peoples' livelihood, which can be achieved through
-Proper use of resources and the microclimatic variation
-Functional institutional mechanisms to address the challenges through research, development and extension
-Human resource development for effective use of science and technology
-Partnership mode of working for harnessing diversity of knowledge and experience
-Mission mode approach to address problems
-Integrated approach for effective utilization of resources, and
-Knowledge center establishment for farmers
With hopes under uncertainty created due to climate change and political transition, change can be changed through
-Horticultural expansion to capitalize different microclimate
-Conservation of local crop diversity: Landraces of crops and their diversity, for which Nepal is rich in, can become the sources of disease resistant cultivars and can contribute to increase crop productivity provided that we create the value of the land races and conserve it for future use.
-Attracting youth in agriculture is central for Nepalese rural economy and there is a need to transform young population into productive population for the country. Everyone wants to leave their home unless they have good alternative or option. Offseason vegetable production in Nepalese hills can be well marketed in Indian plains (better/rational use of Nepal's microclimate). However, a systematic assessment of market and production dynamics is important to market the products across the countries.
