Welcome Remarks by Dr. Arvind Gupta, Director VIF

I would like to welcome our esteemed guest and distinguished audience to this VIMARSH series of lectures which Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) holds regularly. Today we have with us, Dr. SK Pattanayak, Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture to talk about India’s Food Security Challenge, and as to what is being done to ensure food security for India’s 1.3 billion population which likely to increase to 1.6 billion by 2050.

Last year, VIF in collaboration with Internal Crops Institute for the SEMI-ARID Tropics (ICRISAT) and with the support of Dr. SK Pattanayak, had conducted a national workshop on doubling THE farmer’s income through scaling up. The workshop was very useful as it provided a framework called Knowledge-based Integrated Sustainable Agriculture Network - Mission Indian for Transforming Agriculture – or ‘Kisan Mitra’. The Kisan Mitra initiative outlined a framework which would benefit small holder farmers. The project is already been piloted in Vidhraba in Maharashtra and Bundelkhand in UP. It emphasizes the convergence of interest amongst different stakeholders, right partnerships, cutting edge technology and pragmatic policy. The need for climate resilient agriculture through integrated watershed management was also emphasized.

India is the largest producer of spices, pulses, milk , tea, cashew and jute, and the second largest producer of wheat, rice, fruits and vegetable , sugarcane, cotton and oil seeds. We have come a long way from the day of mid-sixties when the country had to depend on PL480 wheat supply from the US under US Aid Programme. This is indeed a creditable achievement. But we are facing new challenges in the food security area as our population increases, water stress develops and climate change takes hold. We also have to address the problem of equitable distribution and nutrition. Climate change will heap adverse impacts on crops. We need to think about this problem now. This will require a focus attention and approach.

The country has got going the national food security mission which focuses on increasing the production of food grain with connective efforts of Centre and State Governments, enhancement of productivity, restoring soil fertility and reducing post-production losses. Ensuring better marketing linkages is the key to enable framers to achieve better prices for their products.

The economic survey of this year has given a number of suggestion to improve food security through improvement of the agriculture sector. This will require availability of irrigation across the small, medium and large farms, availability of fertilizers and manures, soil health cards, micro credits, minimum support prices, relief in disaster management etc. Food security will require both supply and demand management.

To talk about these issues, we could not have someone better than Dr. Pattanayak, the Secretary Agriculture. He is an IAS officer of Karnataka Cadre of 1982 batch. He is also serving as governing board member of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).