Comparative Studies of Agriculture Between India and USA

Comparative Studies of Agriculture Between India and USA | Comparative Differences of Agriculture Studies Between India and USA

Congratulating CSA and CWS for taking this initiative to carry a national workshop on the KIA, Mr. Sharma acknowledged that the very fact that there has been no debate on this important issue is additionally a mirrored image on the agricultural scientists within the country (compared to the Indo-US nuclear deal which brought together many nuclear scientists of the country to write down to the Prime Minister). the subsequent may be a transcription of most of his talk:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, let me present two scenarios to you. India is seen because of the Land of the Holy Cow. we've all been made to believe that each one the 400 species of livestock in India are unproductive, they hardly give any milk. So what does one do? we've to enhance the productivity of the Indian milk production, we're told. There are 27 breeds in India -many of them fit remarkably well within the areas that they belong to. Then an impact was as long as these breeds are good for nothing. So what you want to do is to bring the improved germplasm of Jersy or Holstein Frisian, then crossbreed your cows, then they begin giving the milk.

Comparative Studies of Agriculture Between India and USA

Why is it that we never realize our own potential and everybody thinks that our cattle are unproductive? Is there something wrong here? If you read the Agricultural History written by MS Randhawa, he says that these breeds are well endowed and revered for his or her high yielding capacity. We had a White Revolution within the country but eventually, it's a recent FAO report that finally opened our eyes. The report says that Brazil has emerged as a crucial exporter of Indian cattle breeds and is additionally into embryo transfer and is selling embryos at a specific price to Asia and Africa. The report tells us that within the 1960s, Brazil imported four cattle breeds from India. When these breeds landed in Brazil, they found that these breeds could also yield tons of milk. that they had actually imported them for his or her beef potential. Today, Brazil is taking advantage of the breeds that we had badly neglected and discounted. It speaks volumes about the way we did agriculture.

'Twenty years later, Pepsi entered India through the rear door by promising a second horticultural revolution in trouble-torn Punjab. once they entered India, they talked about those sorts of varieties that might suit the food processing industry. They said that Indian potato and tomato varieties weren't good for food processing. 'We'll bring our own germplasm from America and Venezuela', they said. Subsequently, they brought in 6 sorts of Potato into India and it had been acknowledged by the Central Potato Research Institute that the varieties brought by Pepsi were nearly as good and as bad as existing Indian varieties.

No wonder that Pepsi still uses Indian sorts of potato for his or her potato chips. Then came the KFC. When KFC came in, they said that Indian chicken isn't of excellent quality, so you want to usher in improved variety. When Pepsi brought in potatoes and KFC brought in improved chicken, they need to have revolutionized the whole food processing industry in India. However, they still use Indian breeds of poultry for his or her foods. When businesses want to push in something, they always brand our products as inefficient or substandard or poor in quality. They always say that they might bring superior quality.

"Around 1985, there was an amendment within the American Congress called the Bumpers amendment. Senator Bumper introduced an amendment which said that the US will not support or provide aid to anything that's the con to their trade interests, which would mean essentially just in case of agriculture. So the US in the 1980s started withdrawing from all those areas where it had been competing. allow us to say when it wants work on rice in Asia, it said we would like to withdraw the investments that we made in India because it competes with American interests. On other products like Soybean then on then forth. This amendment still holds good and changes the course of the scientific collaborations within the days to return.

'let's check out the similarities or dissimilarities that exist between these two countries. In America, within the previous century, the country actually moved 27 million people out of agriculture. This was before the War. This was because they had to form the way for the industry to return in. At the time that India attained independence, the entire population of America involved in agriculture was.

Roughly around 10%. the typical landholding size at that specific point of your time was 50 ha. In 2000, the last time that they had their census, they didn't even count the number of farmers for the primary time in their history. the number of farmers had come right down to such a coffee level that they did not have to count them. they are doing have some farmers left. There are fewer people on American farms today than the number of individuals in their jails. What an interesting development model! an equivalent model is now being pushed everywhere the planet.

"I think once we talk about this data Initiative on Agriculture we must look beyond the agreement at the larger onslaught on agriculture that has been pushed everywhere the planet. Why is it that America which has but 2% of farmers and 4% of GDP from agriculture is so curious about agriculture? I feel that's the question that's bothering many folks. Why is 4% in GDP making them so curious about agriculture, what's happening within the WTO then on then forth? The University of Tennessee at Knoxville came out with a study that said that GDP isn't the proper thanks to seeing the role of agriculture within the economy.

With only a forty five-share within the GDP, agriculture still accounts for a 60% share within America's economy. That was a quiet revelation. once I shared this little bit of information with agricultural policymakers in India, they were just baffled because even here, they only mention the share of agriculture to GDP in India is falling and thus we'd like not to bother much about agriculture. What we aren't understanding is that the share of agriculture in India's entire economy is roughly 80-90% which we do not want to count.

Ladies and gentlemen, in America, forcefully removed people out of agriculture after the war - however, America's agricultural exports were increasing, food exports were increasing, subsidies went on increasing. it had been agribusiness corporations that have taken control over the agriculture there. Here, once we mention agriculture, we are talking about farmers - every fourth farmer within the world is an Indian. About 600 million people directly hooked into agriculture. Average landholding has come down from 4ha in 1947 to 1.3ha now. If you're maintaining a cow in America, you need 8-10 hectares of land for the type of feed that goes to the cow whereas, in India, a family of 5 members plus one or two cows would survive on 1.3 hectares of land.

The crisis in Indian agriculture today is really thanks to the collapse of the revolution. Scientists call it (technology) fatigue' but I call it the collapse. The revolution model has completely collapsed and let's face that. Unless we accept that, we cannot plan what we'd like to try to to to reorient our agriculture on economically viable and sustainable lines. we'd like to seem back to know how our understanding of agriculture was changed and the way we shifted our policies towards American agriculture.

USAID did an interesting job once they found out agricultural universities in India under the grant system. Pantnagar was the primary agricultural University and now we've 47 agricultural universities, all supported the grant system of education. They knew that if you've got to vary the agricultural system of a rustic like India, you want to change the tutorial system. you want to change the mindset of entire generations of individuals, the scientific community, and that they did it remarkably well. I still remember that once I was a student of agriculture, the soil science that I wont to read was Buck man and Brady. 

They didn't realize tropical soils but we still read what Buckman and Brady had to inform about our soils! For everything that they wanted to show or promote, they made us believe that our agriculture is substandard, backward and inefficient. within the education system through which we all came but in agricultural universities, we were made to believe that this is often the sole way forward. we've to usher in the so-called improved varieties, add more fertilizers, spray pesticides, pump out more water then on if food production and productivity had to be improved. Yes, the revolution came and scientists continue patting themselves for the rise within the food production.

'That is history. Whether we did a remarkably good job or not is debatable. We went on increasing our production and productivity - NPK was the essential mantra. I always call the agricultural scientists because the NPK breed - a majority of the agronomic research in India within the last 40 years is predicated on NPK. Interestingly, you've got of these various avenues to research agronomic research, qualities of soil, so on then forth, but whenever a Ph.D. student came out it had been only on the NPK model. This tells you a touch about the type of mindset that they had put in. 

NPK, NPK, and NPK - the negative impact of this is often visible now. a number of us see the necessity for correction. However, the scientific community, rather than suggesting corrections is beginning with more revolution because of the answer. If your soil fertility is falling low, you're asked to feature more fertilizers, instead of saying that you simply got to shift now, that we learned a lesson that this is often not suitable for our sustainable farming system. We went on doing this type of mistake for the last 20 years and therefore the result today is that the complete destruction of the natural resources base.

"Some of the agricultural technologists did another job - they pushed during a technology which isn't even suitable for irrigated areas into the un-irrigated areas. I still remember that the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM) did a report which said that dry sands are hungry for chemical fertilizers - what an interesting report! A faulty model of agriculture was promoted into all systems of farming in India, not realizing or acknowledging that there might be an alternative approach.

Scientists got disconnected from the realities of farming which has been the most important casualty in our entire understanding of agriculture. We went on promoting these faulty technologies even in dryland agriculture albeit we knew that these high yielding varieties require more water, more fertilizers then on. Similarly, hybrid varieties require roughly 1.2 times more water than prime yielding varieties. within the rainfed area's sense should tell us that we require varieties which require less water.

Within the rainfed areas of India, we've actually ended up growing varieties that require double the quantity of water. What an interesting system! The scientific community has turned a blind eye - you've got hybrid rice, hybrid sorghum, hybrid corn, hybrid cotton, hybrid vegetables...all of them are grown in rainfed areas.

"At a time when Mrs. Gandhi was our Prime Minister in 1983, Reagan was the President of America. Ronald Regan made a press release then and that I quote-'If America cannot find an export marketplace for its products, the American economy will collapse with a load of artificial agricultural subsidies'. therefore the world began to believe the way to bail out the US and Europe from this crisis - this was justified within the name of the poor and therefore the underprivileged.

We were also able to bow our heads ahead of such plans. check out the WTO now. The role of KIA is to be seen within the context of the WTO also. this is often a part of the trinity which began with the planet Bank and therefore the IMF. They started telling us that it's not good to grow staple foods like wheat and rice which wee got to diversify. That happened first in Latin America and in Africa and now in fact India.

Is under great pressure to diversify its agriculture. Indian agricultural scientists also can say that it's a dire need now. We somehow refuse to ascertain the politics that exist beyond these policies.

"Let's take an example of rice - of these years we were told that insecticides are inevitable if you would like to extend food productivity. So we've used pesticides on all crops including rice as if there was no other alternative. The IRRI has now gone on record saying it had been a waste of your time and energy to use pesticides on rice in Asia. The farmers in the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, and Bangladesh are becoming higher yields of rice without using pesticides.

It took four decades for scientists to know that insecticides weren't in the least required on rice. Here in Andhra Pradesh, Non-Pesticidal Management is being adopted now during a large scale promoted by CWS and CSA. it's not just rice but all other crops that don't require pesticides - yet, we went on promoting and promoting pesticides blindly. Now, the damage is clear with these toxic chemicals. The scientific community has got to acknowledge that they were party to the whole episode.

"This may be a paradigm where we continue giving farmers technologies that they are doing not need. it's an equivalent with genetically modified seeds - we are told that if we do not give this technology to farmers, they might suffer. actually, farmers given this technology are committing suicides.

Growing indebtedness of farmers isn't because the farmer drinks or is spending an excessive amount of money on marriages then on....the reality is that we actually brought in technologies that weren't required and were expensive. They upset the whole economy of the farmers. the value of production had gone up enormously. People blame money lenders but they forget to say the role of nationalized banks during this entire process of truly exacerbating the crisis.

"As a parallel process, while we were destroying our land and other natural resources alongside our farmers, we were shifting agriculture into agricultural business. When the WTO was brought in, we were told that farmers of developing countries can benefit now by exporting which we could import food at low prices. The Punjab Agricultural University, the seat of the GR, actually did a report on this. The Vice-Chancellor was asked by the govt of India how wonderful the WTO would be for the farmers within the state, during a report demanded overnight.

So he asked the department of economics - by the morning, I would like a report from you on what the WTO would do to Punjab, he said. The report said that it'll be wonderful for Punjab...Punjab will export planeloads of foods, fruits, and cut flowers and that we will have dollars returning into Punjab, it had been predicted. That was 1995. Now in 2006, where are all those promised dollars? We ignored the realities of WTO and tried to usher in a system that really benefited the firms. The WTO was a model that was actually designed to market the interests of agribusiness corporations.

In 1995, the WTO promised that the planet will gain $829 billion a year if the whole trade obstacles are removed. Out of which, the gain to the developing countries was projected to be $537 billion. The latest figures would shock you - the entire gain from WTO now's estimated to be $34 billion. From $829 billion, it's come right down to $34 billion. The share of the developing countries has come down from $537 to $6.7 billion and translated into Indian rupees, 35,000 crores are what the developing countries will gain per annum.

This is often the gain for 110 developing countries of the planet. the agricultural development ministry's budget in India is Rs 60,000 crores and that we are only talking about Rs 35,000 crores because the gain from WTO. in fact India's share is negative in WTO. What went on within the entire bargain? Developing counties had to get rid of all the trade barriers and the country after the country became a food importing country. once you import food, you really import unemployment. that is what happened within the developing a part of the planet.

Farmers of 1 country are pitted against small and marginal farmers of another developing country. the sole gainers are America and therefore the European Union. The American gain from the export of food and agricultural commodities is $10 billion a year. the ECU Union has increased its export by 26% which equals $3 billion a year. We now know who are the gainers and who are the losers.

"World over, the emergence of agribusiness companies and consolidation is getting stronger. there'll be three sorts of players now within the organic phenomenon. In America, the technology is produced by one set of companies - Monsanto, Syngenta then on. Then another set of players - the food trading companies like Cargill are available. Monsanto produces the seed and therefore the Cargill will buy the grain. The third player is the big retailer.

With the chain supermarkets, from the seed within the field to the food on your plate, the whole organic phenomenon is extremely well determined and within the hands of a couple of powerful players. In India also, Monsanto will give us food through Reliance. In America, the house for contract farming and commodity trading, if these systems were so good for farmers with the elimination of middlemen, why are farmers continuously quitting agriculture? Can someone answer that soundly before advocating it for other countries like India?

"We are told again and again that for Indian farmers to be competitive within the global markets, we've to market technologies like gene-splicing to enhance productivity. The paddy productivity in America is 7 t/ha and in India, it's 3 t/ha. So if Indian farmers need to compete globally, they need to raise their productivity levels from 3 tons to 7 tons, we're told. Incidentally, the people that grow 7 tons per hectare are not the leading exporters. The country which is that the biggest exporter of rice is Thailand, whose productivity is less than that of India at around 2.8 tons per hectare, which suggests productivity possesses nothing to try to to with global dominance. With increased productivity, farming would become viable, they argue.

Scientists are misleading farmers thereon count too. In America, the total output of rice is $1.2 billion. Those farmers, however, cannot survive till they get a corresponding subsidy. the entire subsidy that American rice growers get is $1.4 billion. If you remove their subsidy their entire rice production falls. this is often not only true for rice but also for other crops. In India, if a farmer gets to boost his productivity from 3 tons to 7 tons, please tell me who will provide the farmer with a corresponding subsidy?

There, it's corporations that are becoming subsidy within the name of farmers. it's not efficiency that creates agriculture viable there but subsidies. The question today within the global arena is that of subsidy versus subsistence. Unless we realize this, we aren't getting to address the important issue of the farming crisis here.

"World over, Bt Cotton has been promoted within the name of productivity and frontier technology, as within the case of USA and India. In the US, the entire output of cotton is $3 billion. The subsidy that 25,000 cotton farmers get is around $4.7 billion. 20,000 cotton farmers in America, get a subsidy of $15 million each day. These subsidies depress worldwide prices by about 40%. meaning that the Vidarbha farmer is priced out. The American cotton growers survive not due to their efficient way of farming but due to the large subsidies provided to them.

Increase this the complication of IPRs - India maybe a mega diversity center as far because the biodiversity cares. We are home to 45,000 species and are home to 81,000 animal species including lower sorts of life. Out of this, 7,000 plant species are endemic and originate from India. On the opposite hand, only 5 plant species and three animal species have originated in America. you can't build a superpower with 5 plant species and three animal species. So what does one do? You are trying to appropriate or misappropriate genetic resources from everywhere the planet. 

We've been told that genetic resources are humankind's heritage. they need to be conserved and put in one place, we were told. We did that. We collected our rice germplasm, we collected our wheat germplasm and that we collected our dryland germplasm and put them in gene banks at different places. Then we were told that this is often mankind's heritage, so if you retain rice germplasm in Cuttack or in Hyderabad it's not getting to helpful, lets put them in one genebank in international agricultural research centers.

So we put our rice germplasm in International Rice Research Institute, Philippines, wheat germplasm in CYMMIT, Mexico, and so on. Then they said, to stay your rice germplasm or wheat germplasm during a city like Mexico City or Manila city, there's always an opportunity that some terrorist will come along and blow it up. So what does one do? you want to keep a replica copy under safe custody. So where is that safe custody? it's in mountain rocks of Fort Collins in America. so that they put a gene bank there and therefore the world's germplasm was collected and kept there. the planet was assured that the world's resources are now taken care of!

In 1992, within the Earth Summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity was signed. The CBD for the primary time said that plant genetic resources are not any longer the heritage of mankind but a national sovereign resource. However, the collections which were already with USDA are outside that purview. which suggests that America has control over the vast germplasm collections from everywhere the planet. they need the staple, they need the biotechnology, they need the cash but the matter is that they do not know what to try to to with these plants. in any case, you cannot continue deciphering and analyzing the composition of every plant for what's commercially useful there.

So what does one do? You attend those communities who actually accept these species. Those communities have the normal knowledge that goes with these traditional resources, as you all know. No wonder that lore has become the excitement word now - that it's mankind's heritage which we must document it before it gets lost then on. Every scientist, policymakers, CSIR, ICAR, et al. became very kind and began documenting the normal knowledge. and therefore the argument was that as long as you've got this documentation are you able to challenge bio-piracy. the truth is that we don't even know what patents are being obtained where supported what resources and knowledge stolen from where.

However, ready documentation during a digitized form, within the name of conserving lore is being prepared. it's in fact readily available for companies that so desire. Somehow, civil society also fell for it. we've joined hands and ensured that they not only the plant genetic resources but also the normal knowledge. that is what agri-corporations are trying to find and if there are still some missing links, the Indo-US knowledge initiative will fill that gap.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the farmers are being completely and continuously squeezed and therefore the agribusiness corporations are continuously increasing their profits. In spite of the so-called successful implementation of the GR, the WTO, and various other things, the typical monthly income of an Indian farming family is Rs. 2115/- as per the NSS estimates. This includes income from dairying also. The implications of this model of agriculture are clear - we are following a model that began in Europe and America where farmers were forcibly faraway from their farming. Despite all the subsidies that they get, European farmers are constantly quitting agriculture.

It's now said, no problem if farmers are dying by suicides or quitting agriculture and migrating. Governments want to facilitate business to return in whether it's Reliance or Bharti. this is often actually the Exit Policy for farmers in India. we will expect 400 million farmers to go away to rural areas and migrate to urban centers in India by the year 2015. this may be the most important disaster that this country has ever witnessed. This displacement will surpass all displacement we've seen thus far from big dams then on.

This KIA is simply a neighborhood of the larger design. we should always be clear about where this is often all leading, who it'll benefit than on. Agricultural scientists who are supporting such initiatives should remember that their very livelihoods are at stake too, here. This initiative might give them some space to travel abroad and should pay some salaries for a short time. they're watching this as an exquisite opportunity thrown at them once they seem to possess nothing else to try to to. However, they ought to understand the larger scheme of things, where more and more universities are unable to pay and keep their agricultural scientists and educators.

'For us within the civil society, ensuring that the farmer doesn't disappear from the economic radar screen of the country may be a great challenge. we should always see how we will join hands and obtain support to make sure that the long term of farmers isn't as dismal because it appears. Thank you".

Comparative Differences of Agriculture Studies Between India and USA

Indian agriculture is labor-intensive, mostly farming, nearly 60% of its population depends on farming and most farms are rainfed. On the opposite hand, American farming is capital intensive, mostly commercial farming but 3% of its population depends on farming and most farms are irrigated. Both countries give subsidies to their farmers but, US subsidies are quite Indias, hence the Doha round dispute. For a variety of obvious reasons, the pace and pattern of recent economic development in China and India invite a scientific comparison. it's always interesting to live and compare the progress of those two great neighbors, comprising an outsized fraction of the world's poorest people, both having recently launched massive programs of expansion and development after centuries of foreign domination, chaos, and stagnation.

Over and above that, the many differences within the institutions and policies, the 2 countries have chosen to adopt for attaining broadly similar economic goals. this is often particularly true with reference to agriculture. Although in both countries, the main emphasis is on rapid industrialization due to the predominantly agrarian nature of the economies, the agricultural sector provides the essential foundation for industrial expansion with supplies of food, raw materials, and labor, with markets for industrial goods and with exchange earned through exports of primary products.

In both countries the pace of commercial advance is severely constrained by the vagaries of agricultural production and dependence on agriculture as an immediate source of income is additionally very substantial, even in any case these years of industrialization. One should note here that the costs at which output is valued being more favorable to the industry in China than in India, the relative share of recent industry in value is larger in China. Both have traditionally been agrarian economies and overflow half their billion-plus people still depend upon land for his or her livelihood. Given their large populations and histories of famine, India and China also share similar concerns on issues like food security.

However, while India’s agricultural sector is growing by about 2.5 percent; China has been steadily growing between 4 and 5 percent over the last 15 years. By 2005, China had actually emerged because of the world’s third-largest food donor. China with lesser cultivable land produces double the food grains, at 415 million tons per annum compared with India’s 208 million tons per annum. This text is an effort to form a comparative study of farming in India, China, and US. To conclude, in agriculture our yields per acre are well below the international norms.

India might be an enormous exporter of food, as long as we could put our ‘house in order’ to close world-class standards. China with lesser cultivable land produces double the food grains than us. God has been very kind to India with tons of sunshine, rain, rivers, lakes, coastline and good hard-working citizens. Governance in India hasn't done enough to point out the results that it's capable of achieving rate because of the No.1 country within the world for potential vs performance. Indians score high marks on performance outside India. this is often because the Governance is best outside. In countries where the Governance & Administration is poor, the performance of its citizens is additionally low.