Friday, February 26, 2010
Second Green Revolution. Help!
The PM, Dr Manmohan singh has said that the GM crops can help usher in the second Green revolution. Does the PM know the impacts of the first one. he should find out from the state he belongs to. Intensive use of fertilisers have degraded farmlands, soil fertility has suffered, yield has crashed-of rice and wheat and other crops--which has contributed to the whopping 19 per cent inflation in food prices. The country now produces less rice per hectare than its far poorer neighbors: Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Also, let’s not forget farmer suicides in Punjab..This is not me, environmentalist saying this, but The Wall Street Journal
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Glad you've raised this... our idea of rural development is pretty screwed as it is. We do need to urgently revive and develop agriculture, but our approach is completely wrong... We sell off prime agricultural land to industrial tycoons for peanuts, in the name of SEZs to apparently 'bring in development to the locals', most of whom are anyway not even qualified to get the lowest paying jobs in the said industry... is this being in a short sighted bid to reach/keep up with 9% growth rate? How long will this growth sustain? We certainly do need to revive agriculture, but minus chemical pesticides, fertilisers and genetic modification... we need a Green Revolution that will undo the ills of the first one and prevent the PM's 'second' one from happening.
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