What type of methods could we practise to improve high yield varities
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Today in India, as in many other developing countries with a rich agricultural tradition of their own, the words ‘improved agriculture’ and ‘progressive agriculture’ have become synonymous with the spread of HYVs (High Yielding Varieties of Crops) grown with ever-increasing doses of (often imported) chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Wherever the new crop varieties have spread, time-honoured crop rotations, inter-cropping patterns and other important features of traditional agriculture have been harshly uprooted (this choice, however, has not been made willingly by most farmers, rather it has been forced on them by a package of government policies, subsidies and selective price incentives).
At the back of this trend, and the official policies which support it, is the belief that traditional agriculture is ‘backward’ and incapable of meeting the desired objectives of agricultural planning, i.e. making adequate food available for the Indian messes and improving the living conditions of the peasants who constitute the overwhelming proportion of the Indian population.
But is this belief, widespread as it is among several international ‘experts’ and India’s own development planners and policy makers, supported by hard facts?
In 1889, Dr John Augustus Voelcker, the Consulting Chemist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England, was sent by the British government to study Indian agriculture. Voelcker toured the country extensively for over one year. His report was published in 1893, and since then has often been cited as an authoritative work on Indian agriculture of this period. For instance, the Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture (1928) said of the Voelcker Report, “Although thirty five years have elapsed since this work was written, the ability which Dr Voelcker displayed in his comprehensive survey of the agricultural conditions of India, in his analysis of problems they present and in the recommendations for their solution, still renders it a book of the utmost value to all students of agriculture in India.”
How did Dr Voelcker view Indian agriculture as it existed nearly a hundred years back? Did he consider it backward and incapable of giving a good yield? The essence of what Dr Voelcker said can be summarised in the following extract from his report : “I explain that I do not share the opinions which have been expressed as to Indian Agriculture being, as a whole, primitive and backward, but I believe that in may parts there is little or nothing than can be improved, whilst where agriculture is manifestly inferior, it is more generally the result of the absence of facilities which exist in the better districts than form inherent bad systems of cultivation . . . I make bold to say that it is a much easier task to propose improvements in English agriculture than to make really valuable suggestions for that of India . . . the conviction has forced itself upon me that, taking everything together and more especially considering the conditions under which Indian crops are grown, they are wonderfully good. At his best the Indian raiyat or cultivator is quite as good as, and in some respects, the superior of, the average British farmer, while at his worst it can only be said that this state is brought about largely by an absence of facilities for improvement which is probably unequalled in any other country . . . I have remarked in earlier chapters about the general excellence of the cultivation; the crops grown here are numerous and varied, much more indeed than in England. That the cultivation should often be magnificent is not to be wondered at when it is remembered that many of the crops have been known to the raiyats for several centuries, rice is a prominent instance in point.”
At the back of this trend, and the official policies which support it, is the belief that traditional agriculture is ‘backward’ and incapable of meeting the desired objectives of agricultural planning, i.e. making adequate food available for the Indian messes and improving the living conditions of the peasants who constitute the overwhelming proportion of the Indian population.
But is this belief, widespread as it is among several international ‘experts’ and India’s own development planners and policy makers, supported by hard facts?
In 1889, Dr John Augustus Voelcker, the Consulting Chemist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England, was sent by the British government to study Indian agriculture. Voelcker toured the country extensively for over one year. His report was published in 1893, and since then has often been cited as an authoritative work on Indian agriculture of this period. For instance, the Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture (1928) said of the Voelcker Report, “Although thirty five years have elapsed since this work was written, the ability which Dr Voelcker displayed in his comprehensive survey of the agricultural conditions of India, in his analysis of problems they present and in the recommendations for their solution, still renders it a book of the utmost value to all students of agriculture in India.”
How did Dr Voelcker view Indian agriculture as it existed nearly a hundred years back? Did he consider it backward and incapable of giving a good yield? The essence of what Dr Voelcker said can be summarised in the following extract from his report : “I explain that I do not share the opinions which have been expressed as to Indian Agriculture being, as a whole, primitive and backward, but I believe that in may parts there is little or nothing than can be improved, whilst where agriculture is manifestly inferior, it is more generally the result of the absence of facilities which exist in the better districts than form inherent bad systems of cultivation . . . I make bold to say that it is a much easier task to propose improvements in English agriculture than to make really valuable suggestions for that of India . . . the conviction has forced itself upon me that, taking everything together and more especially considering the conditions under which Indian crops are grown, they are wonderfully good. At his best the Indian raiyat or cultivator is quite as good as, and in some respects, the superior of, the average British farmer, while at his worst it can only be said that this state is brought about largely by an absence of facilities for improvement which is probably unequalled in any other country . . . I have remarked in earlier chapters about the general excellence of the cultivation; the crops grown here are numerous and varied, much more indeed than in England. That the cultivation should often be magnificent is not to be wondered at when it is remembered that many of the crops have been known to the raiyats for several centuries, rice is a prominent instance in point.”
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