Refuging Progess

- Shanthu Shantharam

AGRICULTURE IS NOW about 10,000 years old, but has been constantly improved to make it more productive and easier through human intervention. So agriculture is a hundred per cent human-created enterprise and there is nothing natural about it. If agriculture had not developed the way it has, the human race would probably have been wiped out from the surface of this planet a long time ago.

Agriculture is also the most environmentally disturbing activity that humans have developed. The question that arises is: can we now turn the clock back on agriculture because it is environmentally destructive considering that today the world’s population is around seven billion, out of which more than eight hundred million people are food-insecure. It is predicted that the world’s population will surpass 10 billion by 2050. The greatest challenge that is looming on us is how to feed such a huge population when the land mass available for agriculture is shrinking.

This profound question is being debated all over the world. But there has not been a single idea on which there has been a consensus to start implementing it across the planet. There cannot one single idea for the world as the agro-climatic conditions vary vastly. Moreover, global warming is already hugely impacting agriculture in many countries of the south with India hurting the most. Not only are the temperatures rising in India, but fresh water for agriculture is rapidly vanishing, and in more than one sense, water wars have started in different communities and regions of India.