In Farm Debate, Missing R&D

Context: Role of science and technology or Research and Development (R&D) in achieving a low-input, high-output agriculture.

Low Investments in R&D in India: India spends between 0.7 to 0.8% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on R&D. Reasons for the low investment:

• Structural issues: like lack of competent human resources and lack of policy clarity.
• Overzealous opposition to the new technologies: from ideologues of the left and right.

Problems faced by Indian Agriculture: Due to lack of R&D

• High natural resource inputs: including irrigation, tilling, harvesting, fertilizers, agrochemicals, seeds;
  • High water usages for Agriculture: Around 690 billion cubic metre (bcm) or 90.5 % goes into agriculture which leads to groundwater depletion in India, which is in the range of 122-199 bcm.
• No alternative crop for wheat and rice:
  • Potential alternatives are not utilizing well: E.g. Maize, which can be a replacement for rice is used as livestock and poultry feed. 
  • R&D deficit in other crops: R&D deficit in coarse grain crops like millets, sorghum etc. leads to low yield potential as well as losses to pests and pathogens.
    • Stagnation of yields of oilseeds like mustard, soybean, and groundnut - at around 1.1 tons per hectare, significantly lower than the global averages.
• Loss of crops to pests: All India Coordinated Research Project on Weed Management has revealed losses between 14 and 36 %. (due to virtual paralysis on the use of genetic engineering and gene editing technologies)
  • Losses on average for wheat 21.5%, rice 20%, maize 22.5%, potato 17.2%, and soybean 21.4%.
  • India is one of the lowest users of pesticides. In 2014, comparative use of pesticides in kilograms per hectare: Africa- 0.30, India- 0.36, European Union countries- 3.09, China- 14.82, and Japan- 15.93.

Ways to deal with the problem of pesticide:

• Let the host fight the pathogen on its own: the interaction between pests/pathogens and their hosts at the gene or the organism level should be left unhindered to run its course.
• Utilize the method of breeding: E.g. Green Revolution technologies were based on the effective use of germplasm and strong phenotypic selections.