Daal, roti, then chaval

There is good news beyond India, too. The global agricultural commodity trough 8212; Asia was particularly affected 8212; is over. Farming was in the doldrums as far as Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand were concerned. That has changed.

So let8217;s of course talk about roti and daal. But let8217;s shift the narrative. The wheat crop is better than officially expected. The government decided not to hit the farmer with soft imports. But we must get out of the fixation that we have to have a surplus in every food commodity. It doesn8217;t happen that way when you grow at 8 to 9 per cent. Average food demand grows at least at 4 per cent, but demand for what are called 8216;taste goods8217; can grow at over 6 per cent. Some you produce yourselves, others you import. The name of the game is not to be caught unawares. China is fighting us in the global bazaar for textiles. But it coolly declared a quota for raw cotton export when some countries tried to 8216;dump8217; it. A similar action here would have raised Cain on reducing export competitiveness. I bet China gives its textiles factories a compensatory set-off.

Look at daal. Our poor production techniques mean demand has gone out of the window as purchasing power has grown. Did you know that Canadians 8212; they are friends, bless them 8212; keep a pretty close eye on the Hindustani thaali? They want the prairies to grow sustainably and more daal and less wheat is better. So they keep track of how much daal we are consuming.

But we don8217;t keep track of how we grow daal. Our approach is marked by poor technology, no irrigation, no concerted policy. Compare chana and tur. Channa grows in the great Gangetic plain. It has been growing at less than 1 per cent per annum for over half a century. But tur, which was doing badly in the national low-growth phase, until the mid-seventies, has done better since, particularly in high demand states. Generally the daal story is depressing. Pulses have been growing at less than three quarters of a per cent over a long period. More than half our pulses requirement is imported. Nothing wrong with impo-rts per se. But why import when domestic production can pick up, and farmers can have another winner?

So much for daal/roti, what about chaval? Agricultural growth is getting above 2.5 per cent from less than 2 per cent earlier. If we want to cross 3 per cent, the crop to watch is paddy. We have a solid technology back-up, with hybrids having done well. Let us not forget to remember Rajiv Gandhi here. He started the paddy technology drive.

The powers-that-be must sit down with the parastatals and the private companies that produce the hybrid seeds. These yield at least twice as much as the old varieties and traditional seed breeders hate them. But hybrids need sustained support for about two years. The beginning must be made in the next few weeks. A focused policy will give the grain economy a strategic push. China did this many years ago. We produced the hybrids and went to hibernate.

There will inevitably be initial resistance to something radically new. For starters, the farmer will have to buy the seed every year instead of getting it from his friend across the field. It is expensive, so there is credit to take care of. But the returns are high and so if we hold the farmer8217;s hand for a couple of years, he will learn to walk. Rice should be the crop that defines the next farm paradigm shift.

The writer is a former Union minister for power, planning and sciences