Hyderabad, June 29: Noted agricultural Scientist M S Swaminathan today applauded the Andhra Pradesh Government for mooting pilot ”Integrated Farm Cooperative Societies” to pave the way for survival of small and marginal farmers in globalisation era.
Giving suggestions at an all-party meeting convened by the State Government, Prof Swaminathan said ”we have to replicate the success in the cooperative dairy sector in the farm sector too to make small farms profitable and productive.
”In Kerala, group farming is highly successful in adopting best agronomic practices and it is a win-win situation for all. If there is enlightened self-interest, every member can succeed,” he said. Urging political parties to think on ways to improve the condition of farmers, cutting across party lines, he said integrated cooperative farms would be able to have better access to crop insurance as well as technology.
In the era of climate change characterised by phenomenon like floods, droughts and sea level rise alternately, farmers should adopt effective monsoon management by maximising benefit during good monsoon years and minimise losses in bad monsoon years. In every Panchayat, one man and a woman should be trained to act as ”climate risk manager”.
Later, talking to reporters, Prof Swaminathan, one of the architects of the first Green Revolution in the country, recalled ”Green Revolution had spread like a wild fire among the farmers.
”The holistic cooperative farms need to become a mass movement in the country to improve profitability of small farmers and productivity of small farms. Power of scale is the need of the hour in the era of globalisation.” Though technology was not ”scale sensitive”, it is certainly ”resource sensitive”. Economies of scale definitely mattered for land levelling, Integrated Pest Management, Integrated Nutrients Management. In fact, big companies had better access to technologies, he pointed out.
—–Agencies