Former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Prof U R Rao on Tuesday called for adaptation of knowledge base and space technology for increasing agriculture productivity in the country.
Delivering the inaugural address at the World Food Day-2007 celebrations, he said that technology used in agriculture practice in India was nearly 10,000 years old and that agriculture productivity which is currently at 1.7 tonnes per hectare was not in proportion to the increasing population in the country.
“ If we want the GDP to touch double figures then agriculture should achieve a growth rate of around four to five per cent. Unfortunately, even though 65 per cent of population is dependant on agriculture, with two per cent adding on every year, agriculture productivity is still low. Bringing in knowledge base into agriculture is the only solution,” he said.
Prof Rao who is also the chairman of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) said that Space technology, especially the Grid Networking System should be used extensively in the country to increase the agriculture productivity.
“ Space technology can be used to map images and find out about surface water harvesting, ground water recharge, soil conservation and alternative land use. This technology had been in use in many districts in Karnataka, Dharmapuri district in Tamil Nadu and Ahmednagar in Maharashtra with a lot of success, but is now disbanded,” he said.
He added that apart from providing the space images it should also be made available at a subsidised rate as many farms in India were small as against those in the US which are around 200 to 300 hectares .
Former Vice Chancellor of the University of Agriculture Sciences, Dr R Dwarakinath called for the involvement of farmers in agriculture policies and decisions as they were the end users.
“ In Karnataka alone there are around 72 lakh farm holdings with most of them being middle-level farmers. The suicide rate among farmers is increasing because they are not aware of how to make use of the external resources-be it management of market forces, credit, new initiatives etc,” he said.
