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India's farm output just slightly higher than population growth
NEW DELHI. Oct 30: India is growing more and more food every year thanks to modern farm technologies which are.dronght-proofing the country's tnainly rainfed agriculture, reports IPS.
But farm experts warn against complacency and say this South Asian nation of nearly 900 million people must make its large chunk of marginal lands more productive to be able to feed its people in the next century.
Farm food production is going tip by about 2.4 per cent every year, just ahead of the annual populatlo'n growth of nearly two per cent.
"The country has become Just about self-sufficient in food production for normal rainfall years, meeting the prevailing level of effective demand." says the Rome-based UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Hie FAO estimates that the likely billion Indians by the year 2000 will need at least 210 million tonnes of foodgrains annually as against the 181 million tonnes produced last year.
"Agricultural development in India has to deal with the combined problems of meeting national food and other agricultural product needs from a limited resource base, reversing resource degradation .and relieving the poverty of all its rural people." says a note prepared by the India office of the world food body.
Most of these needs will have to be fulfilled by growing - food on farms which are not irrigated or lands spoilt by oyer-grazing and erosion.
More than half of India’s 266 million hectares of cultivable land is spoilt in varying degrees. Of these, some 90
million hectares are too degraded to be farmed and are classified as wastelands.
Less than a third of the'140 million hectares cropped area is irrigated and grows the milk of foodgrains, yields range from a high of nearly 3.500 kg per hectare in the northern state.of Punjab to a low of nearly 970 kg per hectare in central Madhya Pradesh state.
More than 94 per cent of Punjab's firms are irrigated and bountiful yields have made it one of India's most prosperous states. Barely a fifth of farmland is irrigated in Madhya Pradesh which is home to some of the poorest people in the country.
funjab is a prime beneficiary of the green revolution of the mid-1960's which dramatically boosted crop yields in parts of India, but by-passed regions like Madhya Pradesh.
Realising that it will have to increase yields of rainfed farms, the government is giv-. 'ing high priority' to boosting production in 'the marginal lands'.
This includes support for farm research to develop drought-resistant crop plants and water conserving schemes in the rainfed regions. .
India gets nearly 3,000 million acre feet (MAF) rainfall annually, most of it during the four monsoon months beginning June. But, more than two thirds runs off into the sea. Almost half the estimated 80 million acre feet groundwater is unutilised.
A FAO study calculates that properly managed India's water resources can support more than three times the country’s'population as most of the water in utilised for irrlga tion.