Chart A Strategy To Balance Productivity, Sustainability In Farming, Say Experts

Amid the challenges of resource management and achieving sustainability in agriculture, India needs to chart a strategy to help transform farming practices in the country and strike a balance between sustainability and productivity.

- Rutam Vora

On the second day of The Business-Line Agri Summit in New Delhi on Friday, a panel of experts deliberated on ways to adopt multiple technologies for production, seeds and markets.

Ram Kaundinya, DirectorGeneral, Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII), said that in a vast country like India, no single technology can be a uniform solution. India needs a basket of tools and technology solutions to achieve the twin goals of sustainability and productivity.

Pitching for the genetically modified (GM) crops to meet the growing need for grains, Kaundinya stated that government policies should encourage the use of these technologies. There is no reason for the argument of GM versus organic, because GM is applicable in some cases, while organic applies in other cases. They serve different purposes and cater to different market segments. So there is an opportunity to coexist and they must coexist. But to decide which technology will be used where, we need to have an expert group in the government that needs to arrive at a plan with the right policies supporting it.