Patil for urgent steps to avoid spiralling food prices

Her suggestion to the government in her address to the nation on the eve of Republic Day assumes significance in the context of rising prices of food articles. "The world over, as also in our country, there is a rising demand for food-grains.

This foretells the need for an intense focus on increasing agriculture productivity to ensure food availability, particularly of agricultural produces which are in short supply, to avoid spiralling food prices," Patil said. To achieve this very important objective, she called for urgent steps towards a Second Green Revolution.

"There should be use of new technologies, better seeds, improved farming practices, effective water management techniques, as well as more intense frameworks for connecting the farmer with the scientific community, with lending institutions and with markets," she said. The President said country's farmers were ready and willing to work, earn and learn and there was a need to respond them positively and do some "out of the box thinking".

Patil said higher agriculture incomes will improve the living standard of the over 145 million rural households which will generate demand and provide impetus for growth in other sectors.

"Recognising this reality we have to involve the agriculture economy more pro-actively into the growth process, both as a centre of production and as a generator of demands for various products and services," she said. The President said there were many complementaries between farming communities and corporate world because both were private and possibilities for win-win partnership between them should be explored.