NEW DELHI: India needs to produce a second “Green Revolution” to boost food supplies or the nation’s 1.1 billion people will face huge social turmoil, the country’s top farm scientist warned.

The government has identified agriculture as a key area for economic reform and called for changes to boost output of such staples as wheat, rice, lentils and vegetables and bring down soaring food prices.

But so far there has been “no sign of major steps to make that happen,” said Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, architect of the “Green Revolution” of the 1960s, which quadrupled food production and made India self-sufficient.

“What we need is political action — we need politicians to ‘walk the talk’,” Swaminathan, 82, said.

“If we don’t succeed, we will face tremendous social problems,” he said.

Swaminathan, a plant geneticist whose ideas helped transform India from a starving nation into a food exporter, runs the Chennai-based M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, which looks for ways to create new farm technologies.

Policymakers globally now are grappling with how to tackle fast-rising food prices and dwindling stocks, with food riots erupting in some countries.

Under the “Green Revolution” — seen as one of the world’s most successful agricultural turnarounds — planting of high-yield varieties of wheat and rice resulted in a sharp output rise.

But India’s agriculture has been in decline in recent years and growing at a far slower pace than the overall economy. In 2006, it was forced to import grain for the first time in years, ringing alarm bells about food security.

The country has updated its services and manufacturing sectors, which account for around 60 per cent of economic output. But some two-thirds of its population still live off agriculture, which has growth of about three percent.

That is less than half the eight per cent minimum overall economic expansion forecast by the government for the financial year to March 2009.

Swaminathan won his doctorate in genetics from Britain’s Cambridge University but turned down a US professorship when he realised he had studied to “produce enough food” in post-independence India and “serve the nation.” Memories were still fresh of the Great Bengal Famine, the world’s worst recorded food disaster, which occurred in 1943, when Britain governed India and an estimated four million people died of hunger.

Now a burgeoning population, a growing middle class with more purchasing power, and erratic weather are among factors creating food scarcity, thus pushing prices up and requiring a new agricultural leap forward, he said.

“We need to take advantage of the existing technology bank. There’s a large amount of technology out there not being used — in efficient water use, efficient fertiliser use, in extension of farmer-to-farmer knowledge,” he said.

For instance, nearly 70 per cent of India’s farmers still depend on rain because of a lack of proper irrigation.

“Storage of food supplies is (still) a big issue,” he said in an interview, with many crops being devoured by rats before humans can eat them.

Analysts also say farming in India is not just about producing food but also about livelihoods. Thousands of debt-burdened small farmers have committed suicide after their crops failed.

Swaminathan said India faced a much tougher challenge in producing a second “Green Revolution” than it did in the 1960s, when too many hungry bellies forced it to live a “ship-to-mouth” existence, depending on US foodgrain imports to stave off famine.

“Politics are much more complicated these days,” he said, referring to the unruly national coalition governments that are often at odds with state administrations.

“The prime minister, who was then Indira Gandhi, had authority over the entire country” to make sure decisions were implemented, he said.

Gandhi gave Swaminathan free rein to implement a new agricultural programme, believing it vital for India to be able to feed itself.

“I’ve been trying for a pan-political approach to produce a second Green Revolution — after all we all have to eat first,” he said, adding he was optimistic India could achieve the goal.

“We’ve got all the main ingredients — a vast agricultural research network of colleges and universities,” he said.

“Crisis is a mother of invention. We faced a crisis in the 1960s and we succeeded. We need a symphony of farmers, scientists and policymakers to make it happen again this time.”

—AFP