Gadkari ने चावल उगाने वाले किसानों को लेकर क्या भविष्यवाणी कर दी? Brut Hindi 29.5.2022 https://www.facebook.com/bruthindi/videos/545729033854248/
We have to much rice, too much wheat. Too much channa. No place in our godowns for this. Luckily the Ukraine war meant that we could export some of this surplus..
He is asking people to grow oilseeds, talking about making ethanol from sugarcane etc..
What is he not saying.. that this surplus is because more farmers have gone in for monocroping, with an eye on the market. HE is not talking about the subsistence part of farming activity, which provides nutrition for most middle rural families.. Here mixed cropping, perennials, is the answer, rather than move from one cash crop to another. Still the alternatives sector has got to come out with a solution to take care of the cash needs, outside of the market, commercial crop system.
It is part of the macro-economics trap, which subsistance farmers are being enticed into.. Just like how PL 480 weaned poor farmers away from labour intensification to High response ( to fertilizer and chemical dependent)_ varieties... The lure of money will shift people away for food for consumption to food from market systems.. What Sri Lanka has shown that it is not possible to make an overnight shift from chemical farming to organic.. we need the transition. In India luckily there is a substantial segment of farmers who are growing food fro their own consumption, that is why perhaps there is still a good and diverse seed resource pool. However we seem to have lost most of the perennial varieties of grain, pulses, even veggies..