INTERVIEW

 Research as Strategy: Interview with M. S. Swaminathan

Dr.M.S. Swaminathan (b.1925) is too well known to need a detailed introduction. After education and training at Coimbatore, Delhi Wageningen (Holland), Cambridge (U.K.) and Wisconsin (U.S.A), Dr. Swaminathan joined the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in 1954, becoming its Director in 1966. He became Director-General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research In 1972 and was made the Principal Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture in 1979. He was subsequently (1980-82) Acting Deputy Chairman and Member, Planning Commission, In charge of S & T, agriculture, rural development, environment and health. He was at the International Rice Research Institute during 1982-88 and is currently the Chairman of M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation at Madras. During the last 40 years, Dr.Swaminathan has published over 200 scientific papers and has guided about 60 students towards their post-graduate and doctoral degrees. He Is associated with a number of scientific and professional bodies. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and of the Indian National Science Academy and was General President of the Indian Science Congress (1976). He is also a member or fellow of scientific and literary academies in other countries, such as China, Britain, USSR. and the USA. He has been associated with many international bodies; he was Chairman of the Council of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO - 1981-85) and Is the current President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. He has won several awards and prizes and received the Padma Vibhushan in 1989.

How do you see the continuity between your science and your own role as an organiser of research, education and extension in agriculture, which tended to have impact on the lifestyles of a large population?

When I joined the agriculture college at Coimbatore in 1944, World War II was in progress and the Bengal famine of 1942-43 had taken a toll of over 2 million lives. One could then see the importance of agriculture to a country like ours. There was a serious shortage of food and other agricultural produce. In the college, it was clear that the improvements in agricultural productivity and yield could be brought about through the science of genetics. Already in Coimbatore, a good amount of work had been done by way of breeding for crop improvement. The work of the late Sir T.S.Venkataraman in sugarcane breeding was well known. The work of the late Dr.K.Ramaiah in the area of rice was also wellknown. So was breeding research in the area of millets and fodders and so on. The quality of such work was so outstanding, it made a deep impression on me and I also thought that genetics should be applied to gain yield improvement in crops, greater disease resistance and so on. After completing my B.Sc.Ag. degree at Coimbatore, I joined the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Delhi in 1947, to continue my education. During my stay there in 1947-1949 I had worked with the late Dr.Harbhajan Singh and the late Dr.B.P.Pal on non-tuber-bearing Solanum species (i.e. brinjal). In 1949, I left for Holland on a UNESCO Fellowship to work at the agricultural university at Wageningen.      In Holland  then, crop rotations could not be practised because it was just after the war. At the time, potato cultivation under no rotation conditions was often the target of diseases caused by nematodes and so my interest was directed to transfer of disease resistance from the wild species of potato to those in cultivation.

This work I found quite promising and I moved to Cambridge after a year to do my Ph.D degree in Genetics, Based on my work in Cambridge, I got an offer from the Department of Genetics, University of Wisconsin to participate in setting up the Inter-regional Potato Introduction Station in Wisconsin, USA, which was being organised as a collection of genetic resources of potato from all over Latin America. I was offered a permanent position in the Univ. of Wisconsin but I decided to return to India in 1953.

After my return, early in 1954, I joined my teacher Dr.N.Parthasarathy who was Director of the Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack, on a temporary assignment. My work was to do with the “Indo-Japonica"  hybridisation of rice. Subsequently I moved to IARI, Delhi as Assistant Cytogeneticist, eventually becoming its Director in 1966.

The philosophy of the rice-hybridisation programme as conceived by Ramaiah and Parthasarathy was as follows; The Indian rice varieties were not capable of using much nitrogen, because they had not been grown under conditions of high availability of nitrogen. So their yield potential was limited to 1-2 tonnes per hectare. On the other hand, the Japonica varieties had been selected for response to increased availability of nitrogen. The aim of the programme was to get this feature incorporated in Indica varieties keeping intact their own characteristics of grain quality, adaptation to our growing conditions, photo-senstivity and so on. It is during work on this project that it occurred to me that response to soil fertility and water management in other crops also needed to be genetically improved. When I moved to IARI in late 1954, I shifted to research in wheat on  the advice of Dr.Pal who was then the Director of IARI. then initiated research designed to develop wheat varieties which can respond well to good soil fertility and water management.

Between 1956-59, over 18,000 trials had been carried out all over India on Indian wheat and rice varieties under a simple fertiliser trial programme. The results indicated that our varieties could not give economic response to over 20 kgs of nitrogen per hectare since they fell down or "lodged" at higher nitrogen levels. At that time, our yields were about one tonne of wheat or rice per hectare. Increase of yield further on the basis of native soil fertility alone was not possible as the native soil fertility could sustain a yield of only about one tonne per hectare. For achieving higher yields, the application of mineral fertilizers became a must. I had always believed that acombination of different approaches is the best way of attacking a problem and in my research on wheat varieties, I tried inter-specific crossing (between different wheat (Triticum)  species), radiation genetics and so on. In this connection, I came across in 1960 the results of a semi-dwarf winter wheat variety at the laboratory of Dr.O. Vogel of Washington State, USA which gave yields of 12-15 tonnes. On inquiry, Vogel directed me to Dr. Borlaug who was operating a wheat programme in Mexico and was developing semi-dwarf varieties in a spring wheat background. Borlaug had essentially used the "Norin” dwarfing genes which had been obtained from Japan by Dr. Soloman who had been a scientific advisor with the Occupation Administration (1945-53). When I contacted Dr. Borlaug in 1962, he wanted an invitation from the Govt. of India, which Dr. Pal was able to arrange. He visited India in March 1963 and sent a wide range of dwarf wheat material in September 1963.

Here, I may clear a certain misconception that is common. Many foreign scholars often write that the genetic improvement of wheat by dwarfs was their idea which we took. On the contrary we had our own, independent programme and the     supply of semi-dwarf material by Dr. N.E. Borlaug in 1963 was specifically at our request. The idea that we must breed wheat and rice varieties capable of responding well to good soil fertility and water management was entirely ours. All that we sought from outside was suitable genetic material for breeding fertiliser-responsive varieties.

The dwarf variety was important to us for many reasons: one was that it had a different morphological architecture and physiological rythm, so that more weight, more nutrients were stored in grains than in other parts of biomass. Thus, increase in nutrient availability and grain yield could be linked. Secondly, they were responsive to irrigation. For example, the traditional wheat varieties which needed water in the early spring, would flatten on application of water, whereas the dwarf varieties would not. There were many dwarfs, we had one in India, the “Mohenjodaro dwarfs" (Triticum sphaerococcum) which had been identified during the excavations, but the dwarfing due to  Norin genes gave the needed combination of characteristics. We obtained large quantities of seeds of two Mexican dwarf varieties -    Lerma Roja 64-A and Sonora-64 and conducted multi-location tests in the country, which gave us the confidence that they were already suited to  our conditions.

In the year 1964, Shri C. Subramaniam became the Minister of Agriculture. That was a time when our imports through the PL480 programme of USA were going up year after year. Subramaniam got in direct touch with the scientists and asked them about the strategies. I had  told him about the high yielding wheat varieties from Mexico and their suitability for Indian conditions, and requested him for an opportunity  to be given to scientists to demonstrate the new varieties to farmers. I pointed out that for farmers "seeing is believing";further, results of high yields in experiments may have been due to special conditions prevailing in the test plots. The reproducibility is thus open to demonstration. In all these senses, the demonstration in farmers’ fields was an important aspect of extension. Subramaniam considered this proposal and approved it, in spite of the skepticism of some of his officers. We put out 150 demonstrations in 1964-65 and they were successful. As a result, all over North India there arose considerable demand for seeds of high yielding wheat varieties. The Government of India in 1966 bought 18000 tonnes of seeds of these two varieties for distribution. This resulted in a sharp increase in the area under HYV wheat, from about 4 hectares in 1963-64 to over 4 million hectares in 1970-71. The seed multiplication was fast largely because the farmers themselves increased the quantity of seeds, looking after the plants with great care.

Following the success of this programme, the Government decided to go in for high-yield cereals. This was in 1966, when Shri Subramaniam was the Minister, and Shri B. Sivaraman was the Secretary. After Subramaniam, Shri Jagjivan Ram became the Minister, and the policy was continued under him. Thus in rice, we had the TN-1 and IR-8 varieties; in Jowar, Dr. Gariga Prasada Rao developed a hybrid variety; a hybrid of bajra was developed at Ludhiana by Dr. D.S. Athwal and several hybrids of maize were also developed under the All- India Coordinated Maize Improvement Programme. The HYV programme came in timely for the Government. Since 1961, the Intensive Agriculture District Programme (IADP) had been on going: The idea was to maximize the benefits of available water, so delta areas had been chosen for intensive agriculture. This was also called “package programme”. I wrote in 1964 that the package had all the right ingredients except the seed, the genetic material which could respond to the rest of the package.

I described these details because in my opinion the need of farming in India is to maximize the yield from the available land and water. The farmer already had problems because of his size and farming was turning uneconomical. So I thought that agricultural research had to be directed towards improvement of productivity, and diversity of cropping.  In such research, I felt that the farmers must be treated as the judges, “the peers”.

What criteria did you adopt in breeding programme for selection of varieties? For example, you had mentioned criteria such as photo-sensitivity etc., in describing the hybridisation of rice programme. Were you able to incorporate factors such as edibility or nutritional quality factors also?

We did incorporate nutritive factors in addition to desirable organoleptic properties. But the point is that in India there is no incentive to producing nutritionally good quality grain. In countries such as Canada, nutritive quality of grain is used in determining the price. In India, such a factor is used in milk but does not operate with grain. Hence, farmers have no particular incentive to opt for varieties which may have better nutritive properties.

The primary considerations were yield, grain quality and disease resistance. Multiple resistance to pests and diseases is very important in the cost, risk and return structure that the farmer faces. Even if a strain is nutritionally superior, it may not be preferred by the farmer because of considerations of cost, risk and return. We have not been able to make much impact on rice productivity in Eastern India, because of problems in water, pest and nutrient management.

Grain quality and consumer acceptability characteristics have also been incorporated and have been tested with the help of Home Science Colleges. But there are problems with the way the new varieties are released to farmers. In Holland, the official organization concerned releases new varieties to farmers and asks at the end of the season if he or she would like to grow it again. A “no" makes everything clear! But here the investigators concerned use formidable questionnaires and proforma and the farmer is not able to give his correct assessment about the new variety. Seed multiplication is also slow. Hence the time taken for seeds of new varieties to reach farmers is unduly long.

Talking about resistance, it is said, and we have documented local experience, that  the high yield varieties in rice are more prone to pests than traditional varieties are. What is your opinion on this?

The observation is correct. I would say the problem is more with the high yield environment than with high yield varieties. The pathogens, which are also plants, tend to grow very well in the high-yield microenvironment, because of its richness, large concentrated availability of water and nutrients, and also because of the plant population density. The last is also important; for example, dwarf rice population density in the field is higher, due to yield considerations; as a result, brown plant hopper, a disease not common earlier, which multiplies at the base of the plant, has become common due to increase in density. In general, certain old problems go away, while new ones start to appear. Such shifts are known; that’s why the breeder tries to incorporate a broad spectrum of resistances. The life-time of such a newly developed strain, on the average, is 5 to 6 years in the USA. By that time the pathogen builds up a new virulent strain.

This is a problem and there are a few approaches to it. There is integrated pest management. In IRRI, we started a research programme on pest management, aimed at cost reduction without yield reduction where farm grown inputs were used to replace market inputs. The concept of integrated pest management is gaining acceptance; but as yet there are difficulties in its practice in India. To be effective, all farmers in a village must participate in the process. Some sort of a get together, an organization at the village level for pest- proofing would be needed. That can create a service sector, the village youth, the children of landless labourers, could put it up and their services could be paid for. Similar things are done in China. What we need is the growth of a scientifically and socially relevant services sector in villages.

Sometime back, in a meeting consisting of experts from the universities and USDA (Bio Science, Vol.33(7), 466, 1983) it was suggested that the concept of modifying the environment to suit the needs of a laboratory developed strain may have to be reviewed in the context of the other approach, which is to select genotypes adapted to a specific environment. How would you react to this?

We must remember that bringing water to an environment changes it in a large way. In our country, we plan to bring in about 3 million hectares every year under irrigation. In this context, there is no point in talking about the existing environment because it would change. So we design ideotypes, which are conceptual models of plants which would be necessary for a particular environment, which may be status quo environment, or dynamic. Changes could be in natural ecology or in  human geography. For example, in Punjab, the young farmers are more comfortable using tractors rather than bullocks for ploughing. Such factors will also be necessary in selection in breeding programmes.

You had pointed out in 1972 that the rate of growth in pulse production was not keeping up with that of cereals. There is a study reported in 1985 (R.Rajagopalan in Interfaces Between Agriculture, Food Science and Nutrition (ed) K.T. Achaya, UN University Press 1985, pp. 61-85)  which points out that while by 1979 we had attained food security, the overall nutritional availability had come down. What is your assessment?

In areas such as Punjab, three crops, wheat or barley, mustard and gram (chick pea) used to be grown in mixtures in a single season. This was before new wheat varieties were introduced. With the new varieties came an explosive growth of tube well irrigation. These other crops had not been used to growing in irrigated conditions. So what resulted was a wheat monoculture of new varieties. This is how a decline in area and per capita availability of pulses began.

There were other problems, too. Firstly,  high-yield varieties in pulses had not been developed; pulses which are rich in nutrients were generally cultivated under rainfed and low soil fertility conditions. Secondly, there was the problem of marketing. Since cereals, particularly rice and wheat, fetched higher prices in the market, they were preferred by the farmer over pulses whose prices were very low. As I    said, in any farm, the first priority is to meet the home need, and once that is fulfilled, the rest is determined by the market. The pulses production declined on that count also.

There are views, such as those of Prof. P.V. Sukhatme, that the problem in India where cereal  diet is important, is not one of protein malnutrition but undernutrition; this is so for the general population except pre-school children. But calorie malnutrition, or undernutrition can be the cause of protein malnutrition. Hence, balanced diets are essential. This. is why I have been pleading for a National Nutrition Security System which will ensure very child, woman and man born in our country physical and economic access to balanced diets and safe drinking water at all times.

Why has Eastern India not experienced a green revolution? There are many irrigation     projects in this area but still there is not striking yield improvement.

The irrigation system in general did not have drainage built in. Many areas, such as Kosi Command, Sarada-Sahayak Command, did not have drainage built in; further the.irrigation systems were designed for kharif crop  seasons. There were always floods in these months. Also, these areas are far away from sea. Water  table is very high and salts have come up. All these have contributed to extensive waterlogging. The reason thus is not improper practices among farmers; the whole irrigation system did not have drainage built into it. Dr.S.R. Sen, in a report on Eastern India, had   suggested that the state departments of irrigation may have to be renamed "“irrinage” departments, to emphasise the importance of drainage in irrigation.

This consideration is crucial in designing irrigation systems in Eastern India, because these zones lack drainage and cause salts to come up on the top soil. Another example of a lack of a systems approach in irrigation projects is the introduction of irrigation in desert areas of Rajasthan via the Rajasthan Canal. This is a wonderful engineering accomplishment but how it is put to use is important. Water in this situation is best used to promote silvipastoral and sylvi-horticultural systems of land use combining forage grasses, legumes, fruit trees, etc., Such farming systems can also yield. More income and jobs.

Since the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in 1928, a number of research and education institutes have been set up in the country. The Imperial Council of Agricultural Research and a number of institutes were established during the period before Independence. In the ‘fifties the organization of agricultural research institutes and universities in the USA seems to have exercised some influence on evolving a similar organization in this country. How do you assess this growth and change and how do you view your own work in the organization of ICAR since 1966, when you became Director of IARI and later Director General of ICAR?

When the Royal Commission on Agriculture (RCA) recommended the setting up of ICAR, it was not to run or set up institutes. There were agricultural cess funds available and, utilizing these and Government funds, the ICAR was to set up a library and information system and promote research projects. The RCA also recommended establishment of "Commodity Committees", particularly for cash crops. There were several committees, like the ones for cotton, oilseeds, coconut, jute and so on, much like the coffee and tea boards of today. These committees also had money for doing some research. In the ‘fifties it was decided that the commodity research system should be reorganized into what was called the PIRCOM Centres (PIRCOM: Project for Intensification of Research in Cotton, Oilseeds and Millets). The idea was that instead of each commodity committee doing something, the PIRCOM Centres would do research based on crop rotations, because many of these commodities in India are grown round the year, given availability of light and lack of extreme winters. The crop rotation practice gave rise in PIRCOM Centres to a farming systems or cropping systems approach.

In the meanwhile, the first Education Commission (in Independent India) headed by the late Dr.S.Radhakrishnan had recommended the setting up of rural universities. When the report was being processed by Maulana Azad and Humayun Kabir, it was the time when the presence of US was strong in India. The British were withdrawing, and the US was taking their place in terms of academic partnership. This was also the time when Nehru visited the USA and talked of his “Discovery of America”. The USA offered assistance in setting up the rural universities, redesignated agricultural universities, on the principles of the “land grant colleges” of USA. These universities were to be responsible for agricultural research, education and extension education. Thus the responsibilities till then with the State Government could be transferred to these universities. Starting with G.B. Pant Agricultural University in 1958, we have about 29 such universities today, many states having more than one agricultural university. Among these universities, none except the G.B.Pant University followed strictly the “land grant principle" whereby land was granted so that the university could derive substantial revenue from it to support its activities.

In 1957, the Rockefeller Foundation signed an agreement with the Government of India to promote research in maize and millets, and to set up a post-graduate school at IARI, Delhi. This ool was set up after the model of an American University course-credit and trimester system, in-house examinations and so on - though some modifications were carried out, particularly in the examination system at the suggestion of UGC, which was then headed by Dr.C.D.Deshmukh. The Rockefeller Foundation gave strong support to P.G.education at IARI; some 5000 graduates would have come out of that school in the last 30 years. IF one looks at Agricultural Universities now, one would find that many teachers there had been graduates at IARI.

The other important involvement of USA was in forming a review committee to look into the reorganization of ICAR. This was the Joint Indo-American Committee, which suggested conversion of ICAR into an autonomous scientist-oriented organization - to which the various Research Institutes like IARI, IVRI, NDRI as well as the PIRCOM Centres were to be transferred. The Commodity Committees were to be abolished and their research programmes were to be transferred to ICAR. The committee had also recommended that the ICAR should be headed by an eminent scientist as its Director-General, assisted by Deputy Directors-General and so on.

When Subramaniam took over as Minister in 1964, his attention was drawn to the report of this committee, and he took action on it. In 1965, Dr. B.P.Pal took over as the first Director-General of ICAR. Dr. Pal strengthened the All-India coordinated projects  which enabled every research worker concerned with a particular crop or topic to be brought together. Dr. Pal also strengthened the agricultural universities - most of them had an associate university in the US. (This arrangement was discontinued after the Bangladesh War of 1971). Such associations had some impact on agriculture here : for example, Jabalpur and Paat Nagar Agricultural Universities had collaboration with the University of Illinois, which brought its soyabean collection to India. This played an important part in the “Soyabean revolution” in Madhya Pradesh. When I took over as Director-General in 1972, after B.P. Pal, we couldn't carry on that kind of collaboration with the US. Their presence was dwindling; the Rockefeller Foundation left India. But we continued with our work in restructuring ICAR. The important change here was in personnel policies through the creation of an Agricultural Research Service (ARS). The first principle in ARS was to delink position and jobs, so that we could dissuade scientists from applying for jobs solely for monetary or position improvement. This meant a shift from a post-centred system to a scientist-centred system, whereby a scientist could be promoted to a higher grade if his or her work was good irrespective of the occurrence of the vacancies. The other was to assign the recruits to ARS work in neglected areas, ecologically and economically handicapped areas for a period of five years. The third aspect was to offer scope for continuous on-job training to stimulate professional growth of the individual scientists. For this purpose a National Academy for Agricultural Research Management was established at Hyderabad. The ARS was designed to promote pride in performance and greater endeavour. Its aim was to make solving a field problem rather than worshipping a discipline as the major purpose of applied agricultural research.

I have always held that personnel policies are the basic to the success and ethos of any research organization. Unless we are able to attract and retain good workers, sustaining research would be difficult. But offering financial compensation may not alone be adequate. Offer of continuous professional growth, enabling one to become part of a wider network etc. helps matters considerably. On-job training must combine both depth in a field with horizontal, comprehensive understanding. Scientists lacking in one or the other may not grow. The problem in ICAR was one of effecting shifts in these matters: shift from discipline oriented problems to a problem-solving approach and from unhealthy rivalries and jealousies to cooperation.

At the level of universities, my aim was to help them perform more location-specific research. For this purpose, funds were made available to them with the help of a loan from the World Bank. Similarly changes in the National Demonstration Systems were brought about depending on what one wants to demonstrate.

All these efforts gave the ICAR a national presence. We also created at that time institutional structures that would look at the sustainability issue. Several bureaus such as the bureaus for plant, animal and fish genetic resources, land use planning etc. were created.

In the reorganization of ICAR, we of course did not keep any foreign organization as a model because our problems were different. The primary problem was to design a personnel policy which, given the paucity of jobs in our conditions, had to be different.

In this context, I may mention that I never believed in the concept of the "Centres for Excellence" - isolated islands of excellence. I believe that it is difficult to stay away from the national ethos, and that need not be attempted. The country’s greatness consists in bringing up the average. Research systems cannot be organised to produce one or two outstanding individuals alone. It is not enough to have one farmer producing 15-16 tonnes of rice per hectare; the average national yield is still less than 1.5 tonnes and that must go at least up to 5 tonnes. Achieving that would be an indicator of the greatness of Indian agriculture, not isolated, splendid performances, though they point to the potential. In my own work in plant breeding I managed to shift emphasis from individual plant excellence to collective excellence - this I consider  my important contribution. In the present day, individual performance is emphasized and competition is encouraged. But I have emphasized the collective; the team work. When I was with ICAR as DG we introduced awards for team work at Ph. D. level and at field level. We had even introduced self-assessment procedures for promotion, to cut down on unhealthy rivalry. But such measures have been changed today, under pressure from the démand for more pay and the UGC system has been introduced. The abolition of the scientist centred system of research management envisaged under the ARS will affect adversely the agricultural research system in the coming years.

The other systems of research organizations, CSIR for example, have often been the subject of reviews and the recent review by the Abid Hussain Committee had recommended very large scale structural changes. Have reviews of ICAR been carried out ?

There were two review committees. The first was the Indo-American joint committee which suggested radical changes, around which the reorganization of ICAR took place. The other committee headed by Justice Gajendragadkar suggested a change from an autonomous registered society to a Government Department. Shri Jagjivan Ram was the Minister for Agriculture then; he thought it wise not to convert ICAR into a regular Government Department. Instead, the Government decided to establish a Department of Agricultural Research and Extension and made the DG, ICAR concurrently Secretary of the Department.

How did you go about reorganizing the extension services, or the “delivery  systems” as  they may be called?

Prior to 1965, the extension work was carried out by extension agents, not scientists. This was over-hauled so that ideas would flow both ways, from lab to land, and land to lab as feed-back on field problems. The National Extension Service (part of the community development programme of the 50s)  had block level workers called "gram sevaks","sevikas” etc. but often they had little to extend by way of either new skills or inputs. In many cases these workers had become "Jack of all trades" at local levels, including fertiliser sale and trade - as somebody said that they had very little capacity for converting know-how into do-how. I believed in the value of sensitizing scientists to the rural reality and as a part of ARS probation, recruits were placed in rural setting for a few months. The Farm Science Centres (Krishi Vigynan Kendras) which we started in 1974 were aimed at merging the skills of the local population with the new technology. Beyond this I was not involved in the reorganization of extension services. That was carried out by Raja of Nalagarh and others. 

What do you see as the role of economics - the role of incentive prices in influencing farming?

As I said, once the first priority of home needs is satisfied, the farmer keeps the rest for marketing. Market thus comes to influence his decision-making, even prior to the beginning of the season. That's why support prices are announced before season. Depending upon the expected returns, the farmer is prepared to cultivate anything, rice, wheat, bananas or bamboos. For the farmer, net income is what is important. I have been referring to this as “net take home pay", on the analogy of the salaried class.

Previously, the credit for farming operations came from the moneylender, to whom the produce was often hypothecated. So, we needed a system which would break the money-lender-  merchant nexus, which would go direct to farmer and procure the produce from him. This was the role played by FCI; without FCI, even the mechanism of price incentives may not have yielded results. NAFED has been playing a similar role in the case of soyabean, potato etc.

The prices are to farmers what fertilizers are to crops. This is the reason why leaders such as Sharad Joshi or Tikait have emphasized the need for higher prices. But the stimulation through higher prices may be applicable only to households which have a marketable surplus. Out of about 100 million operational holdings in the country probably 25 million have adequate marketable surpluses to benefit from higher prices  alone. For the other 75 million, we need greater opportunities for off-farm employment and incomes.

You have been arguing for the need to conserve biological diversity at all levels to preserve the biological potential. Creation of centres where germplasm can be stored and conserved is thought to be one of the best ways of going about organising such genetic conservation. Do you think it is possible for us to evolve in this country, on our own strength, a system whereby germplasm not only from this country but from various places over the world can be preserved?

Following the corn blight epidemic in the early ‘70s in the USA, the National Academy of Sciences set up a committee (1972) to review the situation relating to the diversity of the genetic material in widely cultivated major crops. The committee found that the genetic diversity of many of the important crops in the USA was dangerously narrow - 95% of the groundnut crop was confined to only 9 varieties! Today, only about 150 plant species with about a quarter of a million local strains are important in meeting the calorie requirements of human populations. With the spread of high-yielding varieties of crops, the existing variability is under threat of extinction. The consequences of such a loss can be serious. To prevent such a possibility, action and support need to be organised at professional and political levels. In India, we do have the professional skills and competence needed to organise such a germplasm collection. The political will needs to be forthcoming. What it may take to organise such a collection would only be a fraction of the cost of, say, putting up a nuclear power plant. Professional aspect of the task is not lacking in this country. Besides political will and professional skills, there is need for widespread public awareness of the problem, and the need for development without destruction.

You have been talking of ecological security, and sustainability of agricultural production, as early as 1968 as well as recently. Given the food situation in the country, where the demand is expected to be of the order of 300-400 million tonnes in the next 10 years, how could we achieve that kind of increase?

It is possible to achieve this using sustainable agriculture, but it will be a long and slow process. According to some farmers who have been practising this type of farming, it takes six to seven years to effect the shift over from chemical farming to ecological farming. The present average yield of cereals, particularly wheat cannot be increased much further. So the average productivity, which is about 2.5 tonnes must go upto 5 tonnes per hectare. This way we can meet the demand. China, with less available land per capita is producing over 300 million tonnes food grains already. We must achieve this with sustainable agriculture methods - crop rotation with legumes, green manure, integrated pest management and nutrient supply and so on. The older tech-nologies of intensive fertiliser application etc. will not work. The strengthening and spreading of the land saving agriculture is an ecological necessity. The next phase must be brought about by "green" or environmentally friendly methods.

An important requirement for this technology would be consolidation of fragmented holdings. We could have some thing like a "Food Security Act" which would stipulate both an upper limit as well as a lower limit on the sizes of holdings. There should be methodology for determining the minimum size of holdings based on productivity or the income out of it that can be assured. It is not possible, nor is it necessary to give land to everybody. It is not done even in China, where a good fraction of the rural population is engaged in providing services for farming activity. Our criterion must be the assurance of a minimum income necessary to have a secure life. To achieve these goals, the extension services also must undergo reorientation. There should be farmers’ own extension services, while the Government may only offer training. The ecologically sound technologies require groups rather than individuals to be targeted. This must become a characteristic of the new extension services.

Let me conclude by saying that agriculture is the foundation for food, economic and livelihood security. To achieve sustainable advances in biological productivity, we should arrest any further erosion in the biological potential of the soil, prevent the unsustainable use of ground water and promote the conservation and use of biological diversity. We must capitalise on our human and ecological strengths and use better our coastal and mountain ecosystems. We must spread knowledge-intensive technologies and end the prevailing mismatch between employment opportunities and employable skills among educated youth. If agriculture goes wrong nothing else will go right.

Bibliography

Following is a list of papers/articles of Dr.M.S. Swaminathan which were used as background material for doing the interview:

1. "Plant breeding approaches" (1972) reprinted in Science and the Conquest of Hunger New Delhi 1980. pp 53-149 (Pulses problem mentioned)
2. “Building a national food security system" (1968) reprinted op.cit pp 1-22 (the issue of ecological security is discussed)
3. "Fifty years of agricultural research and development" (pp 329-342 op.cit)
4. “Agricultural evolution in India" (pp 377-378 op.cit) - detailed reviews of the topics.
5. Science and Integrated Rural Development New Delhi (1982).
6. "Our agricultural balance sheet: assets and liabilities" Sardar Patel Memorial  Lectures, All India Radio 1973, reprinted in Science and Agriculture (ed) S.Ramanujam and others,  Indian society of Genetics & Plant Breeding (1980), pp 241-281.
7. "Genetic conservation - from microbes to man" in Plants and Society (ed) M.S. Swaminathan and S.L.Kochchar, New Delhi (1989). pp 101-150.
8. “Jawaharlal Nehru and Agriculture in Independent India” Jawaharlal Nehru Lecture, Nov.1989
9. Memoirs of Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy Vol.2. New Delhi (1986), pp 1158-51.