These fields of rice

The strange thing was that many wanted to grow “dangar”, the colloquial expression for paddy, for we had moved out of grains in Gujarat in a big way in the late eighties and early nineties. Anyway, it was heartening to come back and read in the newspapers that the scholarly director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Mangala Rai, had made a reassuring speech at the annual kharif planning conference that rice technology was on course and we should do well next year, provided sufficient support is available.

Over the years the story of rice has been a happy story and that of research for it a great story. Earlier this year I was amused to read a statement by an influential Delhi think-tank. It quoted a gentleman, who had made a mark selling cold cream and is now a leading expert on economic strategies, saying that he wanted money to be diverted from public sector research in agriculture and arguing for better policies for import of seeds for grains. I remember in the late eighties a worried Ashok Chatterji, who later became Lever’s international research director, telling me that reform should not mean less domestic support to seeds research. I explained that was not on since as he knew grain crops were self-pollinated and there was no go but to keep on refurbishing the farmers’ seed stock. The ICAR had by that time released varieties in the thousands. India’s paddy area, starting at around 35 million hectares in the late sixties, reached around 42 million hectares in the late eighties — and is stuck there. But beginning with a few lakh hectares in the mid-sixties, we reached around 30 million hectares under the high yielding varieties by 1990-91 and are also stuck there. Yield, on an average less than a tonne per hectare, doubled by the early nineties. In the eighties yields started rising in the eastern region and were around a tonne and a half by the early nineties.

There has been an increase in awareness. My country has been kind to me and I have derived great satisfaction by interacting with personnel where research is being carried out. Jorhat, OAUT, Kalyani, all out of the way places, have done wonders. And what lovely names the scientists have come up with. I saw the Kalinga’s, the Birsadhan’s, the Annada’s, the Kapoleee’s and the Govinda’s on experimental farms and then on the fields in the hill slopes — and the Radha’s, Lakshmi’s, Jogan’s and a host of other lovely sounding varieties in the lowlands, with yields from four to five tonnes in experimental farms.

We should be getting out of rice in dry areas like Gujarat. In village after village the farmer is going back to grain because cotton, to which he had switched, does not give him any return any more. Cotton production in the current bumper year is less than what it was in the mid-nineties and back to the levels of the late eighties. But in areas where there is plenty of water, like in Bihar, Bengal, Orissa and Chhattisgarh, we should support the ICAR chief when he wants to plan the next green revolution there. The only hybrids in rice were developed by a project initiated in the late eighties. This was done in collaboration with local and multinational companies. The ICAR wants to extend this to a quarter million hectares next year. We have the technology. We must support the scientists in getting it across to five million hectares through public-private partnerships, not only in the quadrilateral, but in the farmers’ fields also.

I do not agree with those who say get out of rice and wheat. The name of the game is to grow more of it in less land and to diversify less suitable areas to other more profitable crops. The rice on my plate is much too valuable to give up today and tomorrow.