'Let's give a better deal to farmers'

The Economic Times dt/2011/10

US President Barack Obama recently spoke of India and US jointly strengthening agriculture and sparking a second evergreen revolution. A breakthrough in agricultural research and technology is imperative to raise yields across crops, give a better deal to farmers and provide food security to millions of poor. Rajju D Shroff , chairman of Delhi-based Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI) and managing director of United Phosphorous, is convinced about better farm practices leading to a dramatic improvement in yields.
"In Tamil Nadu, Rallis India successfully demonstrated a 40% jump in pulses yield with proper farm practices. This was replicated by United Phosphorous for sugarcane in south Gujarat. However, we need to increase the awareness among farmers to adopt better practices. Experts from UPL guided farmers on scientific methods such as seed dressing where the seeds are dipped with fungicides before they are sown to prevent soil-borne diseases, the distance at which they should be planted, how much and when water, fertilisers, and what preventive pesticide-sprays should be used. The results made our demonstration farm alive learning example for farmers from all parts of the country," Shroff says.

CCFI plans to bring together stakeholders not just from the agrochemicals industry, but also sectors like seeds, farm machinery, irrigation and the dairy sector to brainstorm on ways to improve low farm yields. "We expect these issues to be debated well at a seminar early next month on rural prosperity through better agriculture," he says.

The production of pulses, for instance, has stagnated over the years, forcing the country to depend on imports. Prices have soared globally, too. Clearly, augmenting domestic production is the key challenge before the technology mission on pulses.

According to Shroff, a major problem bogging down farm yields is the supply of spurious agrochemical products. Duplicate pesticides, valued at Rs 1,500 crore, are sold in the domestic market annually. "Those indulging in the supply of spurious pesticides escape with minor penalty. This has encouraged even larger players to indulge in such malpractices. Recently, for instance, a publicly listed company was found to be illegally exporting herbicide glyphosate to an African country using the brand name and registration number of another listed company. The CCFI has sought a cancellation of the former's licence," he said.

Shroff says it is not easy to discover spurious products and hundreds of small offenders who go scot free. "Spurious products give insufficient pest protection. Farmers lose money buying these products and also their crops to pest attacks, leading to a vicious cycle of debt and poverty," he says.

The other problem that the CCFI wants to deal with is the poor public perception of the agrochemical industry, with reports on pesticide residues, many of which are dubious. "We have proved, many times, that the data used by researchers is faulty. Most of them are unwilling to share their raw data. So, we are using the RTI Act to obtain data, but that is a time-consuming process. Unfortunately, even the legal system today doesn't take any punitive action against claims that have been proven as false," he said.

In one case, an NGO found traces of harmful agrochemicals in vegetables in Delhi's mandi, but it was eventually proven that the data was fabricated. In another instance, pesticides were claimed to have found in vegetables that have been banned not just in India but the world over for decades. If the products have long been discontinued, how can one find its traces today?

In fact, the country's premier institute for agricultural research Indian Agricultural Research Institute conducts annual surveys of agricommodities at farm level with over 5,200 samples. "Their research shows not more than 3% of samples at the farm level have agrochemical traces. Even in a country like Germany around 5% of farmgate samples have agrochemical traces," Shroff says.

The process of negating false claims takes long. In fact, India's agrochemical consumption is abysmally low at below 600 gram per hectare as compared with between 3 kg and 10 kg in advanced countries such as the US or Japan. Raising consumption - right type of agro-chemicals at right time - holds a key to improving to farm yields. This has been demonstrated in other developed countries, he claims. Rajju D Shroff